Amazon slips on brick-and-mortar garb in New York

Seattle

Amazon is finally bringing one of its experiments in brick-and-mortar retailing to New York. Barricades went up several days ago outside a retail space in the high-end mall at the Time Warner Center in Manhattan, with a sign saying an Amazon bookstore would open there soon.

Finally, an Amazon spokeswoman, confirmed in a statement that the company would open a bookstore in the space, which was previously occupied by an Armani Exchange. The Manhattan location, with an opening planned for the spring, will be the eighth that the internet giant has opened or announced.

Stores in or near Portland, San Diego and Seattle are open now, and Amazon has said it is working on stores in Chicago and Dedham, Massachusetts, near Boston. On Thursday, it updated its listing of future stores to include one in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, also in the Boston area, and another in Paramus, New Jersey, in the New York City suburbs.

While Amazon has conquered the online shopping market — accounting for 38 per cent of e-commerce sales in the US during the recent holiday season, by one estimate — it has taken a cautious approach to physical retail, where its presence is microscopic.

The company’s strength online and its willingness to test innovative concepts in brick-and-mortar shopping has stirred speculation that it could upend how products are bought and sold in physical stores. The company recently opened a convenience store, Amazon Go, in Seattle that allows customers to grab soft drinks, sandwiches and other food from shelves and leave without visiting a cash register.

Shoppers gain entry to the store with a smartphone application, and are charged for items using sensors and other technologies similar to those in self-driving cars, Amazon has said.

The company is currently allowing only its employees to shop in the store during a test phase.

Amazon is expected to test another concept this year that would add a new twist to online grocery shopping, a market in which the company has shown a growing interest.

While Amazon already delivers groceries directly to homes through fleets of delivery trucks in Los Angeles, Seattle and other cities, the stores to be tested would have customers place orders online and pick them up by pulling into parking stalls.

Two such stores are under construction in Seattle, according to documents filed with the city’s planning department and two people with knowledge of the effort who asked for anonymity because the plans were confidential. Amazon has declined to discuss the stores.

At first glance, Amazon’s bookstores appear to be more conventional, with rows of shelves and quiet nooks for reading. The company stocks far fewer titles than typical bookstores, using online data to determine which ones to carry. The stores also display books with covers, rather than spines, facing out from shelves, to better showcase them.

— New York Times News Service