Amazon power move

Amazon power move
Photo by Dean's Photo / Unsplash

Amazon is closing most of its physical stores to double down on Amazon Fresh and WholeFood brick and mortar locations.

Amazon is closing all 68 of its Books, 4-Star, and Pop Up physical stores
Amazon ends most of its retail experiments

Closing 68 stores (Amazon Books, Amazon 4Stars, Amazon PopUps) all over the U.S. may seem a lot. At the scale of Amazon, it's not. Unsurprisingly these stores were large-scale prototypes designed to answer the question: where to verticalize next? And the answer seems to be that unless it's about fresh products, no physical stores are really Amazon-grade profitable.

If you're a book store (and I'm poking a close friend on this that is just about to open one), it's a glass-half-empty, half-full situation. Amazon clearly deems this market too shallow to be with physical stores (big surprise), but this asks what in-store experience Amazon couldn't deliver to attract recurring customers with a profitable average basket?

This "negative" space is the remaining opportunity and the answer is not automation or data.