Amazon wants you to be able to restock office supplies more efficiently with its new Dash Smart Shelf.
The company announced the smart shelf on Thursday, November 21, detailing that the shelf is a Wi-Fi-enabled smart scale that has weight-sensing technology to track inventory. The shelf tracks the stock for a product, and once it senses that an item is running low, it automatically re-orders it for you.
The shelf can also send you a notification when supplies are running low, in case you’d rather manually re-order. Business owners using the smart shelf would be able to check on their products’ stock levels by using the shelf’s technology.
Amazon said that the Dash Smart Shelf would be available to Amazon Business customers next year, but some businesses have had the chance to test out the product through a pilot program before its official debut.
“As a new business in a rural area, we can’t afford to run out of the supplies we need, whether it’s growler caps or receipt paper. The nearest store is two hours away, so if we run out of something, we can’t just run to the corner store,” said Michael Calhoun, General Manager at Red River Brewing and Amazon Business customer. “Running out of the things we need impacts our business in a big way. Dash Smart Shelf is just what we need to make sure we have the supplies we need to do what we do best—brew great-tasting beer.”
Amazon Business owners who get the Dash Smart Shelf will be able to save up to 15% on orders for select products like paper, snack bars, pens, coffee products, and more that can commonly run low in offices.
While Amazon is already in many of our homes through its smart home products like the Ring doorbell, Amazon Alexa, Fire TV, and more, this is the first time Amazon has ventured into the workplace to make it smarter and more efficient as well.
We reached out to Amazon to see if the Dash Smart Shelf would be available to the general public, as well as what other possible uses the shelf could have aside from benefitting businesses. We’ll update this story once we hear back.