Amazon Announced Friday that it’s permanently closing eight of its high-tech Amazon Go convenience stores, including two in Seattle. It’s the rearmost move by the tech mammoth to pull back on some of its slipup-and-mortar retail operations. “Like any physical retailer, we periodically assess our portfolio of stores and make optimization opinions along the way,” an Amazon prophet said in a posted statement. The two impacted stores in Seattle are located downtown, in the Macy’s structure at 3rd Avenue and Pine Street, and at 4th Avenue and Pike Street.
Both stores have been closed for some time, according to Amazon, and are located in a part of town that has been especially troubled by crime and open-air medicine use. “Like any physical retailer, we periodically assess our portfolio of stores and make optimization opinions along the way,” Amazon prophet Jessica Martin said in a statement. “In this case, we have decided to close a small number of Amazon Go stores in Seattle, New York City, and San Francisco. We remain married to the Amazon Go format, operate further than 20 Amazon Go stores across theU.S., and will continue to learn which locales and features reverberate most with guests as we keep evolving our Amazon Go stores”.
Amazon directors preliminarily verified the company would close some Fresh supermarkets and Go stores following its fourth- quarter earnings results. Amazon is also temporarily breaking expansion of the Fresh grocery chain until it can find a format that resonates with guests and “where we like the economics,” Jassy said on the earnings call. Amazon has been determined to crack the grocery market since the launch of its Fresh grocery delivery service in 2007. It made a major splash when it acquired upmarket grocer Whole Foods Market in 2017 for $13.7 billion, Amazon’s biggest accession ever. Amazon closed down all 68 of its physical bookstores, pop- up locales and 4-star shops in the US and UK. Just this February, however, CEO Andy Jassy said the company plans to go big on its slipup-and-mortar grocery store business.