Amazon just opened its first brick-and-mortar location in New York City — take a look inside
This week, Amazon officially opened its first brick-and-mortar store in New York City — its seventh in the US.
Sarah Jacobs
The entrance to Amazon Books at The Shops at Columbus Circle in New York City.
Tucked inside The Shops at Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan, the physical location uses millions of Amazon customer ratings and reviews as its guide to providing customers with a unique shopping experience.
The store — which sells mostly books and some electronics, like the Amazon Echo — doesn’t have traditional price tags, and it only stocks books that have earned an average rating of 4.5 stars or above online.
Ahead, take a look inside the brand-new store.
The new store is 4,000 square feet, and it houses about 3,000 books.
One of the first things you’ll notice is that all of the books are displayed with their covers facing outward.
Customers will find classic categories like “Business & Money” and “Cooking” …
… as well as categories that you wouldn’t find at your typical bookstore, like “Books with More Than 10,000 Reviews on Amazon.com.”
While the store only shelves books that have an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars online, a table of “Highly Rated 4.8 Stars & Above” books greets you at the entrance.
There’s also an entire wall dedicated to “If You Like…” which, similar to Amazon’s online shopping experience, provides you with three suggestions based on popular novels you might have already read.
In another parallel to the online shopping experience, a select Amazon review accompanies each book, along with its average star rating and the number of times it’s been reviewed.
There’s also a curated selection of books that are highly rated online by users based in New York.
There are no traditional price tags at Amazon Books — you have to scan the books to find out how much they cost. Amazon Prime members can get the books at the same price listed on Amazon.com, while non-members can purchase titles at the publisher’s suggested retail price, which appears on the back of each book.
There’s also a “Gadgets & Gizmos” section that includes the Amazon Echo and Samsung’s Gear VR headset.
With online sales still accounting for just 8% of all retail sales in the US, the goal of Amazon Books’ physical store is to help capture those purchases that happen offline.
Source: Chicago Tribune
As Jennifer Cast, a vice president at Amazon Books, told Business Insider back in March of this year: “We had an opportunity to create a new kind of store and create a different experience in a physical world. Our special sauce is knowing the reading habits and passions of a city through our Amazon.com data.”
Source: Business Insider
Amazon Books is planning on opening five more locations soon, including stores in New Jersey and another location in New York City.
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