Amazon is closing down its 68 brick-and-mortar bookstores and pop-up kiosks in the US and UK to concentrate on its supermarkets, including Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh, media reported.
“We’ve decided to close our Amazon 4-star, Books, and Pop Up stores and spotlight more on our Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods Market, Amazon Go, and Amazon Style stores and our Just Walk Out innovation,” an Amazon representative told news.
“We stay focused on building incredible, long term physical retail encounters and advances, and we’re working intimately with our impacted representatives to assist them with tracking down new roles within Amazon.”
After opening its first book shop in Seattle in 2015, Amazon has evaluated a variety of retail ideas: general stores without cashiers, supermarkets, and a configuration called “4-star” in which it sells toys, family things and different products with high client appraisals.
However, those adventures have not been pretty much as productive as the company had hoped.
Amazon operated 24 book shops, 33 4-star areas, and nine spring up stands in shopping centers. There were plans in progress to open an extra 16 4-star locations.
Instead, the company will presently move its concentration to its Whole Foods and its own marked general stores and grocery stores.
Last week, Amazon divulged its very first cashierless Whole Foods area in Washington, DC.
Shoppers at the Whole Foods area in the Glover Park segment of the capital never again need to cooperate with anybody at a sales register when paying for their groceries.
The company unveiled its Just Walk Out innovation, which was first declared in the fall of last year, at the 21,500-square-foot area – the first of two that will be furnished with robotized cash registers.
A similar initiative is being made arrangements for a Whole Foods in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles.
The technology is now accessible at a few Amazon Fresh supermarkets and in its Go convenience stores.