Swindon tour guide shows thousands happens when they buy on Amazon

The Swindon tour guide behind what is billed as one of the town’s most alternative free tourist attractions is encouraging guests to sign up for a special tour ahead of the UK’s busiest shopping season.

Martin Newton is a Tour Leader at Amazon in Swindon, where he shows members of the public and private groups around one of Amazon’s most technologically advanced buildings in the South of England. He spent more than a decade as a baker before joining Amazon seven years ago.
The Amazon Tours programme takes customers behind the scenes at the Swindon fulfilment to experience first-hand how an Amazon order makes its way from click to doorstep. 
Guests discover how products are picked, packed and shipped, while learning more about the people, technology and processes that help bring millions of orders to life.
During the free tour, led by Martin, guests have the chance to explore the technology that powers fulfilment centres, from cutting-edge robotics to advanced logistics systems. 
Guests also experience Amazon’s processes, showcasing how the company strives to continuously improve and innovate to better serve its customers.  
Leading Public Tours at Amazon is not the career he expected to have. Martin left secondary school without the GCSEs he had hoped for and went straight into a bakery apprenticeship, staying with the same employer for more than ten years.
“I was fully City & Guilds accredited, and I was just one level off being a master baker,” he said.
He was good enough at it to leave something behind on the shelves. In 2012 he developed a multi-seed range for a major supermarket chain that is still a major seller today.
“It started because we had excess ingredients that we couldn’t do anything with,” he said. “We made something from them, and I thought, actually, this is a good product. 
"We took it through the whole proposal process, it got approved, and it’s become one of their bestsellers.”
Confectionery was his real strength, and he won awards for the counter displays he built, but when a major restructure hit the business, he decided it was time to do something different. He heard Amazon was opening a site nearby and went along to the interview with no real intention of taking the job.
“I wasn’t intending to accept a job with Amazon at all. I went to the interview just to see what they had to say,” he said. 
“Then I heard about the robots, the guaranteed hours and the four-day working week. And when they told me about Career Choice, I thought, I have to go for this. I didn’t have the best education behind me, and here was a company willing to fund it.”
That was seven years ago. He started in the stow department, loading items into the pods that customers order from, then trained as an instructor, a team leader and an amnesty responder working inside the robotics field. A conversation with his manager pointed him somewhere he had not considered.
“They said they thought I’d make a really good learning and development trainer,” he said.
When a new Swindon site was announced, he applied for a transfer and a promotion and got both. Four years as a trainer came next, followed by a step up into a learning specialist role that took him across Europe to support the launch of around seven new Amazon sites, including the company’s first in Ireland and its first in Turkey.
When Public Tours came to his site in Swindon, he was put forward to run them, and the job soon became full-time.
He said: “Even as a baker, I was training the new apprentices and working with the company’s bakery college.
“Really understanding the people behind things and how to communicate with them has been a running theme through every role I’ve had.”
The job has taken him further than he expected, too. Tour Leader training took him to Amazon’s site in Nashville - the first time he had ever been to the United States - and this year he travelled to Seattle to meet colleagues from sites around the world.
“It was completely mind-blowing,” he said. “It was the first time I’d ever been to America, and you’re being sent out there by Amazon with everything covered. 
"I already work in a big building, and that one is five times the size of this one, with the newest robotic technology that’d I’d only read about – seeing it in action was incredible.”
These days Martin particularly finds the tours he leads for learners' fulfilling, and what he wants students to take away is specific.
“Students get to see the real-world application of the technology,” he said. “Schools tell us regularly that it’s a great way to see technologies they’ve only read about in textbooks. 
"We have robotics and we use a lot of AI in this building, and they get to see it working live and interacting with the people who work here.”
His own favourite moment on every tour comes on the robotics floor, the part of the building he used to work in himself.
“Each robot can lift more than 500 kilos, which is about the same as a small cow,” he said. “That’s the one that gets people. They say, really, that much?”
He does still bake occasionally, though he keeps quiet about it at work in case the cake requests start.
He left his old school without the GCSEs he wanted. In November, he will be the one showing 50 of its students around a building full of robots.
“It’s one of the most precious jobs I’ve ever done,” he said. “You never know who’s going to come through that door, and no two tours are ever the same.”
Swindon is one of six locations across the UK that offers free Amazon Tours. Each tour is free and lasts between 60 - 90 minutes. Places on the Amazon Tours programme can be booked at www.amazontours.com/uk/onsite#start-your-tour