https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/exclusive-amazon-close-all-its-physical-bookstores-4-star-shops-2022-03-02/

 
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March 2, 20229:39 PM UTCLast Updated ago

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    Retail & Consumer

Amazon to shut bookstores, some other physical shops in turning point

By Jeffrey Dastin

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2 minute read
People walk past an Amazon Books retail store in New York

People walk past an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, U.S.,
February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

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March 2 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc said on Wednesday it plans to
close all 68 of its brick-and-mortar bookstores, pop ups and shops
carrying toys and home goods in the United States and United Kingdom,
ending some of its longest-running retail experiments.

The news, which Reuters was first to report, marks a turning point
for a company that began as an online bookseller and helped drive
established rivals such as Borders to bankruptcy.

After opening its first book shop in Seattle in 2015, Amazon has
tried out an array of retail concepts: convenience stores without
cashiers, supermarkets, and a format called "4-star" in which it
sells toys, household items and other goods with high customer
ratings.

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Amazon aimed to bring its online touch to the real world. Its
bookstores would pull from its vast data trove and showcase what
people were reading and even reviews they left online, for instance.

But Amazon's innovations were not enough for some of these
experiments. Its "physical stores" revenue, largely from grocery
sales at its Whole Foods subsidiary, has often failed to keep pace
with growth in Amazon's other businesses.

Amazon will close its 4-star, pop up and bookstore locations on
various dates and notify customers via signage.

Workers will receive severance or can move to jobs at nearby Amazon
stores that the company said it would help them find.

Amazon's experiments continue. It recently announced plans to open a
fashion store in greater Los Angeles where algorithms suggest what to
try on. Last week, it opened its first Whole Foods store in
Washington, D.C., that isreplete with technology letting customers
check out without scanning items or the help of a cashier.

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Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in Palo Alto; Editing by Nick Zieminski
and Richard Chang

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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