Could Amazon Dash Buttons Eventually Order MRO Products?

On Thursday, Amazon announced the addition of dozens of brands to its Dash Button offering, now numbering more than 100. Could the products of industrial brands soon be just a button-push away?

On the one-year anniversary of the release of the first batch of its innovative Dash Buttons, Amazon has tripled the amount of buttons available to more than 100, announcing an additional 80 on Thursday.

Amazon's Dash Buttons — USB-sized buttons for instant reordering of products — have gained dozens of well-known brands covering a range of consumer products ranging from batteries to office products.

The 2015 launch included brands of Bounty, Gatorade, Gerber Formula, Gillette, Huggies, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Maxwell House, Tide and Ziploc. The expanded batch of brands now inicludes Brawny, Charmin, Clorox, Doritos, Energizer, Lysol, Peet's Coffee, Playtex, Pruina, Red Bull, Starbucks, Trojan, and Vitamin Water.

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So how does MRO products fit into this?

Granted, all those above brands are consumer brands for household items, office products and toiletries. But given that orders placed from Dash Buttons have grown by 75 percent over the last three months, according to TheVerge, and an order is now placed every minute, Amazon will surely add more and more brands to go well beyond 100.

What's to be seen is which industrial brand will be the first to join as a Dash Button. I think the obvious guess is 3M. The manufacturing giant makes everything from wall mount hooks to power tools, so it's plausible that 3M could join with its initial offering only being 3M household items, but later add industrial items. Not to get ahead of myself, but it certainly seems there's potential for customers to order abrasives or safety products via an Amazon Dash Button.

This could be potentially good or bad for MRO distributors. End users could use the buttons to order directly from the manufacturer through Amazon. Or, distributors could place dash buttons throughout their warehouse, so that when a tote of fasteners is running low, a re-order is just a button-push away.

Two of the brands added to the Dash Button offering Thursday are battery makers Energizer and Rayovac, brands that already are used in industrial settings for either facility power, lighting or power tools.

Whatever happens, it will be interesting to see what impact Dash Buttons or similar instant-ordering device technology will have on inventory management operations.

Here's how Amazon's Dash Buttons work: The Wi-Fi-enabled button instantly orders a predetermined amount of product when pushed. The order is made through the user's Amazon Prime account, so it already has their payment information. Through that account, the user sets up the size and quantity that comes with each product order. Once the button is pushed, a blinking LED light on the button lets them know an order has been placed.

The full list of new Amazon Dash Button products includes: 

- Ageless La Cure
- Air Wick
- Airborne
- All Laundry Detergent
- Angel Soft
- Aquaphor
- Arm & Hammer Cat Litter
- Blue Sky
- Brawny
- Brita
- Burt’s Bees
- Caleb’s Kola
- Carefree Feminine Liners
- Charmin
- Clorox
- Dasani
- David Sunflower Seeds
- Derwent
- Doritos
- Downy
- Eagle Pack
- Energizer
- Gain
- Garnier SkinActive
- Green Works
- Hansen's Soda
- Holistic Select
- Honest Kids
- Honest Tea
- Hunt's Tomatoes
- Illy Bottled Coffee
- Illy Coffee
- Jolie Paris
- La Roche-Posay
- L'il Critters Vitamins
- Litter Genie
- L’Oréal Paris Revitalift
- Lysol
- MegaRed
- Milk Baby by Milk & Co
- Milk by Klim by Milk & Co (men's line)
- Move Free Joint Health
- Mucinex
- Nature Valley
- Near East
- O.N.E. Coconut Water
- Ocean Spray PACt
- Old Mother Hubbard
- Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Popping Corn
- OxiClean
- Peet's Coffee
- Playtex Sport Tampons
- Pure Leaf Iced Tea
- Purina Beyond
- Quaker
- Quartet
- Quest Nutrition
- Rayovac
- Red Bull
- Rid-X Septic Treatment
- Schick Men’s Razors

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