Associated Press
- Amazon is closing physical stores Amazon Books, Amazon 4-Star, and Amazon Pop Up, according to Reuters.
- The e-commerce giant has struggled to replicate its online success in brick-and-mortar retail.
- The company still has other physical stores open, including Fresh grocery stores and the newly announced Amazon Style clothing store.
Amazon is reportedly shutting down many of its physical stores.
The e-commerce giant told Reuters on Wednesday that it’s planning to shutter its Amazon Books, Amazon 4-Star, and Amazon Pop Up stores in the US and UK.
The closures will affect 68 stores.
Amazon opened its first physical bookstore in 2015. Three years later, the company unveiled its 4-Star store, which only sells products that have customer ratings of at least four stars on Amazon’s website. Amazon never officially announced the launch of its Pop Up stores, although it confirmed the opening of one as far back as 2014.
Some of Amazon’s brick-and-mortar stores have struggled to find the same success as the company’s online business.
In Amazon Fresh grocery stores, the smart shopping carts that allow for cashierless checkout have seen a steady decline in use since their debut in 2020, according to a leaked internal document obtained by Insider. The company has also fallen behind on its ambitious plans for cashierless Fresh stores, having opened just one in the US by late 2021, despite goals to open 33 such stores that year and 580 of them by 2023.
Amazon did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment but told Reuters it will continue its work on other physical store concepts, including Whole Foods, Amazon Go, cashierless Fresh stores as well as Amazon Style clothing stores, which the company just announced last month.
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