It becomes hard to imagine that our dome exists at all. This is the level that we go outside. Pelley wow, what a beautiful view. Tonight, youre going to see it like youve never seen it before. Simon this is called lung packing, and William Trubridge is doing it to attempt something known as a free dive going down more than 400 feet, longer than a football field, on a single breath. He carries no weights, but hell go down quickly. At 70 feet, hell lose buoyancy and will be pulled by gravity alone. Medical scholars say the sport is revealing human capabilities that are making them rewrite textbooks on human physiology. Im steve kroft. Im lesley stahl. Im morley safer. Im bob simon. Im charlie rose. Im scott pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 minutes. Good evening, National Retail federation says 141 Million People went shopping this hold day Weekend Spending 57 billion. That is more shoppers than last year but less money spent. Thanksgiving day store traffic was the big winner, up 27 . 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Find out more at aflac. Com. [ male announcer ] when youre sick or hurt, aflac pays you cash. On the table by not choosing the right medicare d plan. No one could have left this much money here. Whoohoohoo yet many seniors who compare medicare d plans realize they can save hundreds of dollars. Cvs pharmacy wants to help you save on medicare expenses. Talk to your cvs pharmacist, call, or go to cvs. Com compare to get your free, personalized plan comparison today. Call, go online, or visit your local store today. Rose there has never been a company quite like amazon. Conceived as an online book seller, amazon has reinvented itself time and again, changing the way the world shops, reads and computes. Amazon has 225 million customers around the world. Its goal is to sell everything to everyone. The brainchild of jeff bezos, amazon prides itself on disrupting the traditional way of doing things. A few weeks ago, the Company Announced it was launching sunday delivery. Tonight, for the first time, you will be introduced to perhaps amazons boldest venture ever. Over the last month, 60 minutes was granted unprecedented access inside amazons operations. If you have ever wondered what happens after youve clicked and placed an order on amazon, take a look. If there is such a thing as santas workshop, this would be it a 1. 2 million square foot distribution center, the size of more than 20 football fields, gearing up for the Holiday Shopping season. There are 96 of these warehouses worldwide, what amazon calls Fulfillment Centers. Tomorrow, on what is known as cyber monday, its expected that more than 300 items a second will be ordered on amazon. Jeff bezos if you go back in time 18 years, i was driving the packages to the post office myself and we were very primitive. Rose jeff bezos is the founder and c. E. O. Of amazon, with an estimated worth of at least 25 billion. He sold his first book on amazon in another era, back in 1995. Part of what amazon customers expect we want it now. Whats happening at the Fulfillment Centers that have made that possible . Bezos the secret is were on, like, our seventh generation of Fulfillment Centers, and we have gotten better every time. When i was driving the packages myself, one of my visualizations of success is that we might one day be big enough that we could afford a forklift and. laughs rose youve got a forklift. Bezos . Weve got forklifts. Rose theres very little amazon doesnt have. Dave clark right now, were really in the center of what is the physical manifestation of earths biggest selection. Rose amazon Vice President dave clark showed us how the process begins. After the products arrive into the building, they are immediately scanned. The products are then placed by stackers in what seems to outsiders as a haphazard way, a book on buddhism and zen resting next to mrs. Potato head. Heres what i want to know this is a swiffer. Clark it is a swiffer. Rose its sitting next to the encyclopedia of world history. Clark of course. Rose that doesnt make any sense to me. Does it make sense to you . Clark it. It does. Rose what . clark can those two things. You look at how these items fit in the bin. Rose yeah. Oh clark theyre optimized for utilizing the available space. Rose oh, i see. Clark and we have computers and algorithmic work that tells people the areas of the building that have the most space to put product in thats coming in at that time. Rose amazon has become so efficient with its stacking, it can now store twice as many goods in its centers as it did five years ago. Clark anything you want on. On earth, youre going to get from us. Rose anything you want on earth, youre going to get from us . Clark yeah, thats where were headed, i believe. Rose once your order is placed, a socalled pick ambassador walks the aisles, plucking and scanning your items before placing them in bins. Those bins eventually wind up in front of a packer, who knows exactly how big of a box to use based on the weight and amount of items. Your address is slapped onto the box, and then a picture is taken of your address label. Gadgets known as shoes sort and divert the boxes to the appropriate spiral chute, based on the postal code. This accelerates the delivery process. The boxes are then loaded onto awaiting trucks, which are assigned to particular regions raleigh, north carolina, in this case. Amazon uses more trucks than planes because so many Distribution Centers have been built near customers. If you can do this with all these products, what else can you do . You guys can organize the world . Clark well, youve got to start somewhere. Rose but the company has also started sameday deliveries of groceries in two cities milk, vegetables and dry goods, to name a few items. Amazon fresh began in seattle, and only after five years has it expanded to los angeles. Thank you for your order. Rose what is it youre trying to learn thats taken you five years to learn . Bezos how to make it make financial sense. You know, whats not to love . You order the groceries online and we deliver them to your door. laughter but thats very expensive. Rose but is this the holy grail for amazon, i can deliver it on the same day . Bezos its a possibility. If we can make this model work, it would be great because it extends the range of products that we can sell. Rose amazon is now flowing into other areas far removed from its original mission as an online book seller. Amazon fashion, launched this fall, sells highend clothing. Tell me, what is amazon today . Bezos i would define amazon by our big ideas, which are customer centricity putting the customer at the center of everything we do; invention we like to pioneer, we like to explore, we like to go down dark alleys and see whats on the other side. Rose on the other side of amazons Online Retailing is a business customers know little about. Its called Amazon Web Services a. W. S. And may soon become amazons biggest business. To keep track of its massive online orders, amazon built a large and sophisticated computing infrastructure. Amazon figured out it could also expand that infrastructure to store data and run web sites for hundreds of thousands of companies and Government Agencies on what is known as the cloud. How much of the internet do you run . Bezos its a good question. Its a lot, though. Rose well, whats a lot . Whats the neighborhood . Bezos i could tell you this. Most internet startups and a lot of Big Internet Companies run on top of a. W. S. Netflix, very famously. And you could say, oh, thats very odd because netflix, in a way, is a competitor of amazon. Rose other than netflix, who else uses a. W. S. . Bezos oh, big enterprises, Big Government institutions. Rose like the cia . Bezos the cia. Rose does that present any conflict for you, the fact that you provide the cloud that the cia uses for its data . Bezos i dont think so. Were building whats called a private cloud for them, charlie, because they dont want to be on the public cloud. Rose but the Company Continues to branch out in areas the public can see and touch. People read books the same way for centuries until amazon introduced the kindle ereader, and amazon has just released its kindle fire hdx tablet in typical amazon style, without making a profit on the device. So you sell this at breakeven . Bezos we sell this at break even and then we hope to. Rose thats a very thin margin. Bezos its a very thin margin. But we hope to make money when you. Rose sell all the stuff. Bezos . Buy books and movies. Rose thats always been your philosophy. Bezos exactly. Rose bezos believes low costs ensure Customer Loyalty to amazon, even if its at the expense of profits. Amazon is one of the rare companies that, on a quarterly basis, shows little profit, and yet is beloved by investors. Bezos in the long run, if you take care of customers, that is taking care of shareholders. We do price elasticity studies, and every time, the math tells us to raise prices. Rose but why dont you do it . Bezos because doing so would erode trust. And that erosion of trust would cost us much more in the long term. Rose that long view, bezos believes, gives amazon a distinct edge. Bezos that longterm approach is rare enough that it means youre not competing against very many companies, because most Companies Want to see a return on investment in, you know, one, two, three years. Rose you dont care about that . Bezos i care, but im willing for it to be five, six, seven years. So just that change in timeline can be a very big competitive advantage. Rose for example, amazons profits are redirected to building more Distribution Centers, like this one in new jersey. The more centers it constructs, the closer the customer and the faster the delivery. And every time a new center goes up, publishers and traditional retailers shudder. A lot of small Book Publishers and other Smaller Companies worry that the power of amazon gives them no chance. Bezos you got to earn your keep in this world. When you invent something new, if customers come to the party, its disruptive to the old way. Rose yeah, but i mean, there are areas where your powers so great and your margin, youre prepared to make it so thin that you can drive people out of business, and you have that kind of strength. And people worry, is amazon ruthless in their pursuit of market share . Bezos the internet is disrupting every media industry, charlie, you know. People can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy. Amazon is not happening to book selling; the future is happening to book selling. Alpha house. Rose amazon is also pouring money into original Television Programming that can be streamed to amazon customers, like its first series, alpha house. A comedy written by doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau about four republican senators who live in the same townhouse. Amazon didnt select the show the conventional hollywood way. Alpha house was picked out of thousands of scripts with the help of amazon customers who reviewed the shows. You are using your Customer Base to tell you rather than the opinion of some. Bezos thats exactly right. Rose . Hollywood programmer . Bezos were changing the green lighting process. Instead of a few studio executives deciding what gets green lighted. Rose socalled taste makers . Bezos yes were using what some people would call crowd sourcing to help figure that out. Rose what other industry will amazon disrupt . At amazons secret lab 126 in california, designers and engineers are experimenting on next generation devices, the contents of which are eagerly speculated about. Are you working on a settop box that will allow people to watch streaming video and not need to have Cable Television . Bezos i cant answer that question. laughs i dont want to talk about the future roadmap of our devices, so ill have to just ask you to stay tuned. Rose soon . Bezos charlie rose but during our visit to amazons campus in seattle, bezos kept telling us that he did have a big surprise, something he wanted to unveil for the first time. Bezos let me show you something. Rose oh, man. Oh, my god bezos this. Rose this is . Bezos . Is. These are octocopters. Rose yeah . Bezos these are effectively drones, but theres no reason that they cant be used as delivery vehicles. Take a look up here so i can show you how it works. Rose all right. Were talking about delivery here . Bezos were talking about delivery. So theres an item going into the vehicle. I know this looks like science fiction. Its not. Rose wow bezos this is early. This is still years away. It drops the package. Rose and theres the package. Bezos you come and get your package. And we can do halfhour delivery. Rose halfhour delivery . Bezos halfhour delivery, and we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds, which covers 86 of the items that we deliver. Rose and what is the range between the Fulfillment Center and where you can do this within 30 minutes. Bezos these generations of vehicles, it could be a tenmile radius from a Fulfillment Center. So, in urban areas, you could actually cover very significant portions of the population. And so, it wont work for everything; you know, were not going to deliver kayaks or table saws this way. These are electric motors, so this is all electric. Its very green, its better than driving trucks around. This is all an r d project. Rose with drones, theres somebody sitting somewhere in front of a screen. Bezos not these; these are autonomous. So you give them instructions of which gps coordinates to go to, and they take off and they fly to those gps coordinates. Rose whats the hardest challenge in making this happen . Bezos the hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all the systems you need to say, look, this thing cant land on somebodys head while theyre Walking Around their neighborhood. Rose yeah, thats not good. Bezos thats not good. Bezos and, you know, i dont want anybody to think this is just around the corner. This is years of additional work from this point, but this is. Rose but will years mean five, ten . Bezos im an optimist, charlie. I know it cant be before 2015, because thats the earliest we could get the rules from the f. A. A. My guess is thats. Thats probably a little optimistic. But could it be, you know, four, five years . I think so. It will work, and it will happen, and its going to be a lot of fun. Rose with the drones possibly taking flight in the not too distant future, amazon is raising the stakes in the race for faster delivery. Jeff bezos believes the company has no choice. Bezos companies have short life spans, charlie, and amazon will be disrupted one day. Rose and you worry about that . Bezos i dont worry about it because i know its inevitable. Companies come and go. And the companies that are, you know, the shiniest and most important of any era, you wait a few decades and theyre gone. Rose and your job is to make sure that you delay that date . Bezos i would love for it to be after im dead. laughs intrigued by the thought of amazon drones landing at your doorstep . Go to 60 to see more you really love, what would you do . [ woman ] id be a writer. [ man ] id be a baker. [ woman ] i wanna be a pie maker. [ man ] i wanna be a pilot. [ woman ] id be an architect. 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