Amazon opens its first physical store

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter 20 years of online book selling the retail giant Amazon has opened its first physical store in Seattle, its home city. The store opened on Tuesday 3 November 2015 in University Shopping Centre, Seattle Washington. 

The brick-and-mortar store, opened in time for both Black Friday sales and Christmas, stocks over 5000 books based upon book reviews and sales data and appears to be like any other independent bookshop inside.

Jenifer Cast, the vice president of Amazon Books has said: “We’ve applied 20 years of online book selling experience to build a store that integrates the benefits of offline and online book shopping.”

The online site is still present within the store with online customer ratings being taken into account when selecting store stock, and certain books have reviews cards on placards near to them with comments from online customers.

Although the CEO of General Growth Properties at Amazon, Sandeep Mathrani, has retracted his earlier statement of Amazon’s goal to open 400 other physical stores, the comments from Jenifer Cast do imply that expansion is Amazon’s goal.

She told The Seattle Times: “We’re completely focused on this bookstore. We hope this is not our only one but we’ll see.”  The store is part of slow initiative by Amazon to boost brand name by creating a physical presence such as the recent introduction of lockers and pick-up locations for deliveries. Nevertheless, a physical store has been in the pipeline since the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, first mentioned the idea in 2012.

 The store is part of slow initiative by Amazon to boost brand name by creating a physical presence

However, many independent bookshops in Seattle and across the world find this news distressing. Amazon is the largest seller of books worldwide and the presence of physical stores could monopolise the book market both online and off.

However, Deborah Bass, a spokesperson for Amazon, has attempted to quell these fears, believing that Amazon offers no threat to independent retailers. She has released a statement saying “successful stores will remain successful. Offline retail is a big space with room for lots of winners.”

The stores sale figures for the Christmas period have not yet been released, so the effectiveness of a brick-and-mortar store is still uncertain.

Image Credits: Flickr / Claudio Toledo (Header)