People walk by an Amazon Books store at the Westfield Garden State Plaza shopping mall in Paramus, N.J., Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Amazon confirmed on Wednesday, March 2, 2022, that it’s closing all of its physical bookstores as well as its 4-star shops and pop-up locations as the online behemoth reworks its physical footprint. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)
By Anne D'Innocenzio
Amazon is confirming it's closing all of its bookstores as well as its 4-star shops and pop-up locations as the online behemoth reworks its physical footprint.
The Seattle-based company said Wednesday that the move, which affects 66 stores in the U.S. and two in the United Kingdom, enables it to concentrate its efforts on Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods Market, its convenience concept called Amazon Go and its upcoming Amazon Style stores. Amazon Style, which will sell fashion and accessories, is set to open in a Southern California mall later this year.
The store closures will also allow it to focus on expanding its physical retail technology, the company said.
Amazon opened its first brick-and-mortar bookstore in 2015, two decades after it began selling books online and helped drive a number of shops out of business. Amazon's 4-star shops, which first debuted in 2018, carry a limited selection of best-selling products from top categories that Amazon.com sells including devices, consumer electronics, toys and games.
The move comes as Amazon.com Inc.'s overall revenue growth is slowing, and it's looking for new ways to reignite sales.
But Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, said the strategy comes as a surprise and is an acknowledgement that the book stores weren't delivering the returns Amazon was looking for.
Saunders did note that the main problem with Amazon’s non-food stores is that they lacked a real purpose even though the merchandise was well-presented.
“They were designed for people to pop in and browse rather than as destinations where people would head on a mission to buy something,“ he wrote in a note on Wednesday. “Ultimately, this wasn’t great for driving footfall — especially in an era where people are visiting shops less.”
Saunders added that the other problem is the assortment which, in many locations, was disjoined and unfocused.
CES 2024 starts this week in Las Vegas. It's set to feature swaths of the latest advances and gadgets across personal tech, transportation, health care, sustainability and more. Here's a list of the coolest announcements so far.
Astronauts will have to wait until next year before flying to the moon and another few years before landing on it. NASA on Tuesday announced the latest round of delays in its Artemis moon-landing program.
The Biden administration has enacted a new labor rule that aims to prevent the misclassification of workers as independent contractors. The labor department rule going into effect Tuesday replaces a scrapped Trump-era standard that lowered the bar for classifying employees as contractors
The KC-46 was to be the ideal candidate for a fixed-price development program. Instead, it has cost Boeing billions, and made industry wary of such deals.
Dave Long, CEO and Co-Founder of Orangetheory Fitness joins Cheddar to chat trends in the industry for 2024. He updates us on the company's plans to expand and what the state of the economy has meant for business.
One of the world's largest renewable energy developers will be getting hundreds of wind turbines from General Electric spinoff GE Vernova as part of a record equipment order and long-term service deal.
A moon landing attempt by a private US company appears doomed because of a fuel leak on the newly launched spacecraft. Astrobotic Technology managed to orient the lander toward the sun Monday so its solar panel could capture sunlight and charge its onboard battery.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has announced that 100,000 businesses have signed up for a new database that collects ownership information intended to help unmask shell company owners. Yellen says the database will send the message that “the United States is not a haven for dirty money.”
