Online bookseller Amazon.com Inc is considering building a distribution center with the proceeds from its recent bond offering (CI No 3,403), which will speed the overall process of making shipments to customers, according to a Bloomberg report. The company already has two distribution centers up and running – one in its home town of Seattle, and one in Delaware – but it will need to expand its distribution network quickly if it intends to compete on even ground with national retailers such as Barnes & Noble Inc and Borders Group Inc. Barnes & Noble has been doing business on the web since last year (CI No 3,160), while Borders just opened for internet business last week (CI No 3,408). Last week, Amazon raised $326m in a private offering of senior discount notes maturing in 2008. Amazon had already set aside $75m of that for retiring debt and won’t comment on what it plans to do with the rest of the proceeds beyond saying that it will be used for general corporate purposes. In April, the company reported a first-quarter loss of $9.3m on revenue of $87.4m, up 32% consecutively from $66m in sales for the fourth quarter. It also said that cumulative customer accounts grew to over 2.26 million as of March 31, an increase of 50% from December 31.
