With e-commerce sales booming, these companies are leasing up new distribution and fulfillment facilities.

Online sales shot up during the COVID-19 quarantine, causing many companies to rethink their logistics strategies. As a result, a number of e-commerce players are aggressively expanding their physical footprints to improve their fulfillment and delivery capabilities.

According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, e-commerce sales accounted for 16.1 percent of total retail sales in the second quarter of 2020. On a non-adjusted basis, the estimated second quarter total for U.S. e-commerce sales was $200.7 billion, an increase of 37.0 percent from the first quarter and up 44.5 percent year-over-year.

That change in the retail marketplace is being driven by consumers and is here to stay, according to Greg Healy, senior vice president for supply chain solutions and workforce analytics in Colliers International’s Inland Empire office in Southern California. “We aren’t going back, so companies need to learn how to embrace and succeed in this new paradigm,” he says. A retailer might not necessarily need a storefront to succeed anymore, but does need a robust supply chain strategy.

Big-box omnichannel retailers, e-commerce companies, and third-party logistic companies (3PLs) that support e-commerce and fulfillment functions are among the top companies are aggressively expanding their supply-chain networks, he continues.

Demand for new space by Amazon exceeded that of all other e-commerce tenants put together, representing up to 50 percent of new market activity, says Miami-based Walter Byrd, executive managing director for industrial services at real estate services firm Transwestern.