First of its kind Amazon brick & mortar is closing in just over a year of opening in Cbus
Last October, Columbus became the second city in the United States to open an “Amazon Style” store. After 13 months, it’s already closing.
On Thursday, Amazon announced that they’re closing their only two Style stores in Columbus and Los Angeles by November 9th. The Columbus location was at Easton, located inside the 3985 Gramercy St. space.
Here’s how the storefront works: there are clothing racks set up throughout the shop, but with only one of each item, then a QR code attached to each clothing items. You use your phone to scan the item and browse through each size and color option. You can “select” the item on your phone, and an employee then puts the item in a fitting room for you. In the fitting room, there’s a touch screen where you can then rate each item and request more sizes.
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While this futuristic shopping experience may sound intriguing for some, reviews for the Easton store show that it can be “overly complicated” and “overwhelming” for others. Many of the Google Reviews emphasize that people would rather pick out their own items and bring them to the fitting rooms instead of waiting for an employee to do that. It’s “an extremely bizarre concept,” said one person.
Amazon has also closed most of their brick-and-mortar bookstores, many of their “Go” convenience stores, and some Amazon Fresh stores that “weren’t living up to their promise,” said AP News. “The company has also paused expansion on Fresh supermarkets as it aims to find the right formula that will allow it to scale its business.”
This doesn’t necessarily indicate Amazon is in trouble, by any means. They’re actually adding 50 additional Whole Foods locations in the U.S.
There has been no announcement of what store will take up the Easton space for now, but Amazon said they’ll offer severance for the employees who want to leave, or find other positions for them.
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