The plans were revealed by the CEO of a shopping mall company on Feb. 2. Amazon opened a single bookstore in Seattle last fall.
Amazon could be planning to open 300 to 400 brick-and-mortar bookstores across the United States, according to the CEO of a shopping mall company who mentioned the possibility during an earnings call with analysts on Feb. 2.Sandeep Mathrani, CEO of General Growth Properties, was asked about mall traffic during the call and said he had heard that Amazon was planning the store openings, according to a Feb. 2 story by The Wall Street Journal. Last November, Amazon opened an experimental brick-and-mortar store in Seattle."You've got Amazon opening brick-and-mortar bookstores and their goal is to open, as I understand, 300 to 400," Mathrani said during the analyst call, The Journal reported.An Amazon spokeswoman told eWEEK in an email reply that the company doesn't comment on rumors and speculation. Amazon's bookstore in Seattle was the company's first brick-and-mortar location, the paper reported. Mathrani "did not say how he heard about Amazon's plans," and a spokesman for the mall company declined to comment further, according to a Feb. 2 story by The New York Times. An anonymous source said that Amazon's plans for physical stores are more modest than those reported by The Journal, according to The Times story.
"Even if Amazon is not planning to go nationwide with its stores anytime soon, any expansion of its brick-and-mortar presence is likely to send shivers down the spines of other booksellers," The Times reported. "Amazon's success as an online retailer of physical and electronic books has already devastated chains like Borders and seriously wounded Barnes & Noble."
Amazon has frequently experimented with new ways of getting its products into the hands of consumers.
In January, the company announced the expansion of its same-day college order pickup service to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia this spring. The service, which is being called Amazon@Penn, will feature a pickup point where customers will be able to stop in to get their orders from some 2 million items that can be directly shipped to the location, according to a recent eWEEK story. Customers will be able to track the orders on their mobile devices for self-service pickups.
n its Website, highlighting a smooth vertical takeoff, a flight to drop off a package of soccer shoes to a consumer and then a vertical landing at the shopper's home. The video showed the package being released from an interior storage compartment in its fuselage and then being left behind as the drone took off vertically to return to Amazon's distribution center.The drone design is a flat-looking flying machine with a triple rudder tail and three landing wheels. Its engine is mounted at the rear in the center of the vertical rudders.Amazon's drone program is aimed at providing package deliveries of less than 5 pounds to consumers in less than 30 minutes in select locations. The drones will fly under 400 feet in altitude, have "sense and avoid" capabilities to stay away from aircraft and other obstacles, and be able to be operated up to distances of 10 miles or more, according to Amazon.Amazon has been looking at drone deliveries as a way of offering faster service to customers while also saving money, compared with the more costly human-based delivery systems.
- eWeek