Competing with Wicked Fast Delivery

Some of the most recognizable ecommerce retailers and marketplaces are pushing fast delivery to the extreme and building a significant competitive advantage.

Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, and Target are resetting delivery expectations through massive networks of stores, fulfillment centers, and delivery infrastructure.

With few exceptions, small-to-midsize ecommerce businesses cannot compete universally, but they can compete selectively.

Buyers of Hatch green chiles have a unique sense of shipping urgency, different from standard grocery items.

Wicked Fast

Two-day shipping used to be considered fast. Nearly 13 years ago, ecommerce stores faced a similar challenge when Amazon Prime and ShopRunner (which ceased operations in January 2026) were “changing customer expectations” and forcing SMBs to consider faster, more expensive free shipping options.

Now as then, ecommerce delivery times are accelerating to a breakneck pace.

In May, Amazon announced that it would expand its 30-minute-or-less Now delivery service to tens of millions of customers in the United States and around the world. Amazon Now is neither free — Prime members pay $3.99 per order — nor available for all products or locations. But shoppers in many large cities can get thousands of groceries and household essentials almost immediately.

Later in May, Walmart expanded its own 30-minute-or-less delivery service to 33 U.S. markets. More than 100,000 products are eligible, including groceries, medicine, household supplies, pet food, electronics, and prescriptions. Walmart said 26% of its Express deliveries already arrive within 30 minutes, and in the first quarter alone it completed millions of such deliveries across more than 19,000 ZIP codes.

Home Depot joined the fray in August, rolling out three-hour-or-less Express Delivery nationwide. The service offers fast delivery for thousands of plumbing, electrical, hardware, paint, tool, and other project-related products at a small flat fee. For a contractor missing a fitting or a homeowner halfway through a repair, three hours can be meaningful.

Target is moving quickly, too. Same-day delivery sales grew more than 25% year over year in its fiscal second quarter ended August 1, helping online comparable sales rise 8.7%. Earlier this year, Target said its same-day services generated more than $14 billion in annual sales and accounted for two-thirds of its ecommerce sales. Much of the remaining shipped volume already reaches customers the next day.

“Delight is our standard. That means getting the basics right. Sharp pricing, strong in-stocks, wicked fast same-day delivery,” said Target CEO Michael Fiddelke during a March 2026 earnings presentation.

Distributed Delivery

One major difference between 2013’s two-day delivery challenge and 2026’s push toward near-immediate fulfillment is infrastructure.

Amazon has spent years placing fulfillment centers, delivery stations, and smaller local facilities closer to shoppers. Walmart, Home Depot, and Target have another advantage: Thousands of physical stores serve as distributed ecommerce fulfillment sites, putting inventory within a relatively short drive of millions of customers.

That proximity changes the economics of speed. A Walmart order delivered in 30 minutes or a Home Depot purchase arriving in three hours does not require an expensive cross-country express shipment.

The result is a competitive advantage that is difficult to copy.

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Urgency

Fortunately, shoppers do not value delivery speed equally for every purchase. The more urgent the need, the more likely faster delivery influences the sale.

And “urgency” depends on the circumstance. A broken, inoperable plumbing part may be highly urgent, but a routine service item may not be. Ditto for printer toner: it’s urgent when the cartridge is empty but not when it’s part full.

Yet collectibles, handmade goods, and other nonessentials are typically unurgent and exemplify how smaller merchants can compete against “wicked fast” delivery.

The practical question is whether receiving a product today instead of several days from now changes the shopper’s decision to buy.

Differentiation

The answer is “not always.”  Delivery speed matters less when a product is difficult to substitute and non-perishable.

The Hatch Chile Store is a good example of both ideas. It sells what is essentially a grocery item. But the chiles are differentiated from those at Walmart or Amazon’s Whole Foods because they are boxed fresh in the field and shipped overnight.

The purchase itself is not urgent. An order placed in early August might not ship until late in the month because the peppers are still ripening. Once picked, however, the product becomes perishable and highly time-sensitive.

The consumer may be willing to wait weeks for fresh chiles and pay extra to receive them timely. This is a much more tenable way to compete even with large enterprises.

Expectations

The Hatch Chile Store also shows the need to align product, marketing, and delivery expectations.

Customers ordering fresh chiles understand that fulfillment depends on the harvest. The wait may be weeks, but once the peppers are picked, overnight delivery becomes part of the product promise.

For ecommerce SMBs, the lesson is not necessarily to promise faster shipping. It is to set the right expectation and then meet it. A differentiated product delivered reliably on its own terms can compete with something faster but more generic.

Compete Selectively

Fast delivery should therefore be an operating decision, not a blanket policy.

Merchants should consider urgency, differentiation, order economics, geography, and customer value before paying for additional speed. A nearby order may already arrive quickly by ground, while a high-margin or time-sensitive order may justify expedited service.

Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, and Target can make extreme speed the norm because they have built enormous networks to support it.

Ecommerce SMBs can compete where speed creates value and avoid the race where it merely adds cost.