Interview with Théophile Armand (MBA 2016), General Manager of Amazon’s “first mile” logistics in France

First opened in 2020, the Amazon site in Senlis (Oise), which employs around 3000 people, is the only one in France that receives products from third-party sellers to be dispatched to the various Amazon distribution centres around the country (these are the final storage locations before delivery to the end clients who place their orders online). Théophile Armand, a graduate of the EDHEC Global MBA programme, has been General Manager since the beginning. Here we talk about logistics, tech and management of this privileged gateway for Amazon suppliers in France.

How would you summarise your current position and responsibilities?

I look after operational and logistical flows here at what we call the “first mile” centre, which handles very large volumes. My priorities are to ensure a safe and modern work environment, as well as career development opportunities for staff working on site, overseeing quality and site output, and meeting customer demands. I'm also in charge of other missions, including external public relations (prefects, mayors, chairs of municipal communities, MPs, partners and carriers), and I contribute to international projects (moving activities from one site to another, bringing sites up to standard, etc.). And for a year now, I have also been training all the new Amazon site directors worldwide.

What does Amazon’s diversification involve at first mile and storage locations?

We constantly re-evaluate our logistics network, and development opportunities range from improving our current sites to extending and even creating new ones. We work with two types of storage locations, depending on product dimensions. A supplier near a storage site will prioritise delivery to that location rather than ours. The value added of a first mile centre is that you can position exactly the right number of items near your customers, and therefore meet delivery demand as quickly as possible, sometimes even the following day (including Sundays). For example, sun cream is stocked in Montélimar rather than Lille because statistically sales will be higher there. Amazon's strength is its capacity to anticipate and adjust stock levels automatically from one site to another using data analysis. We know where the item is, when it will arrive at the storage location and at what point it will be dispatched to the customer. And we can instantaneously readjust our trucks in transit between locations. The starting point for absolutely everything is the customer. Our centres must above all be near them, which means near big cities. 

Yet big cities are not as such better equipped to facilitate access to products then rural areas?

The Paris region, covering a small surface with more than 12 million inhabitants, is where competition is stiffest. In less densely populated areas of France, you have to supply the same number of people over a much larger area. Many people order things on Amazon to avoid driving for half an hour to find a store where they're not even sure they'll find what they're looking for. In Paris, you can go anywhere, but people prefer to make life easy for themselves. For example, you can pick up your delivery in a metro station (at an Amazon Locker) on your way home from work. E-commerce makes it possible to stimulate demand by creating new opportunities for consumers, micro businesses, SMEs and local authorities. In some countries, we even manage same-day deliveries. Why not here? Maybe on a smaller scale, with different delivery methods. 

You mentioned training as one of your responsibilities. How does that feature in your daily work?

Training is a key issue at all levels. Amazon recently announced a €50 million investment to train its employees in France between now and 2030. In our logistics operations, we recruit stock pickers without any prerequisite of prior experience. What appeals to us in the people we recruit is their future potential rather than past experience. We created our first apprentice training centre in 2024, but for several years, through the Amazon School, we have been providing state-recognised courses equivalent to a secondary school diploma or even 2 years’ post-secondary. Last year, at our Senlis site, around 100 employees moved up internally across all levels. Since I arrived at Amazon, after my MBA, I've had a highly intense and diverse career with a great many challenges. For example I opened the Senlis site in the middle of the COVID lockdown. Outside of a hospital, I had never seen a social distancing system work so well. Spanish and German teams trained us beginning in late September. We had to progress quickly before Christmas. You can't manage that kind of achievement if you don't recruit motivated and committed people with developed skills whom you continue to train throughout their careers.

How has your first mile centre in Senlis progressed since 2020?

With an increase from 200 to nearly 2000 employees (out of a total 3000 on the site) in just 4 years, Amazon has become a major contributor to the social and economic life of the Oise region. At the same time, we have massively invested in tech to improve handling and the transport of heavy loads using articulated booms and sorting machines. We combine tech with recruitment for increasingly qualified positions with scope for career advancement. Machines can't work without humans, and humans can't work as well without machines if we want to ensure safety, quality and reliability in parcel delivery. In my position, I'm lucky enough to have as much contact with tech as with humans, and very often improvements come from the machine’s user. The best feedback we get from the ground is from our operators, who have adopted this technology. Our Amazon Innovation Laboratory in Italy is working on the creation of new machines and running tests. But we also use technologies developed by other logisticians, adapted to the volumes we handle.

In 2025, Amazon will celebrate 30 years in existence. What does the future hold?

We will also be celebrating 25 years of Amazon in France, and 5 years at the Senlis site! The incredible journey over the last 25 years in France encourages us to continue to innovate for our customers, partner sellers and staff. Our capacity for flexibility will no doubt be strengthened further so we can offer our customers an ever-larger catalogue of products at the best price, with the best delivery experience and the lowest possible environmental impact. Indeed, Amazon recently signed a carbon neutrality commitment for all of its operations by 2040. We have reduced the average weight of our packaging by 43% per delivery since 2015, and we now limit the number of kilometres covered, maximise the fill rate of our trucks and use alternative transport methods such as barges. We will also be allowing our partner sellers in France (who include 16,000 SMEs) to continue to grow, in particular via exports, thanks to AI-based solutions that will help them in their daily operations.

Isn’t Amazon a threat to local stores, when in a single online order you can buy a vacuum cleaner, a book and a film? 

I don't see small stores as competitors of Amazon. Beyond the clientele, you need to look at the value added of the customer experience. A small store owner with welcoming premises who offers local produce, interpersonal exchanges with sellers, and interaction with the products themselves – knowledgeable advice from a bookstore owner, for example – or any other way of standing out will always have a future in the face of the Internet. Amazon offers another experience: choice, price, speed. Small store owners offer something different or complementary. The law of commerce has always been based on the initial customer experience and whether or not it generates loyalty.