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Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

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Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#281

Post by bentley »

rnk wrote: post #223
hanniabu wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if you don't give up all your privacy to mega corp then you deserve to be blacklisted by society"

The whole point of the go stores was to do retail in a different way, where you had to conform to their way or it wouldn't work. Yes, it was limiting for people that didn't have a phone with them or account info. Do all of these people befuddled by the phone/app requirement for go stores struggle when they go to pick up something at an amazon locker? It's basically the same thing, you can't "talk to someone" to get y…

You can access an Amazon locker with a barcode printed from the Amazon website, or even from your confirmation email. The app is not required.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#282

Post by emodendroket »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #92

I used to visit one of the NYC the Go stores daily until covid happened. It was cute and surgically clean, worked wonderfully, and their inventory management was much better then CVS and Duane Reade which often sell out of things and have empty shelves for days. But nobody ever went there - no matter what time of the day I went, there would be one person doing inventory and stocking, two people standing by to help pe…

If you’re charging way more than surrounding stores going all-in on quinoa seems like it’s a sound strategy, or maybe would have been one in the the recent past.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#283

Post by asveikau »

Spivak wrote: post #188
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting quinoa in everything and assuming the addressable market had more disposable income seems like one of the signs of the last bubble.

Why are people so weird about food? What about quinoa made it associated with rich yuppies? If you didn’t already know you would probably assume the main consumers would be dudes who want their chicken and carb to have even more protein.

Quinoa specifically: it's foreign sounding, so people were unfamiliar with it, and it was touted for being more nutritious than things like rice.

So, novelty and cool factor, plus appeal to those looking for healthy options; some overlap with the faddish nature of trends in healthy eating.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#284

Post by emodendroket »

CydeWeys wrote: post #183
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #92

I used to visit one of the NYC the Go stores daily until covid happened. It was cute and surgically clean, worked wonderfully, and their inventory management was much better then CVS and Duane Reade which often sell out of things and have empty shelves for days. But nobody ever went there - no matter what time of the day I went, there would be one person doing inventory and stocking, two people standing by to help pe…

Isn't the whole point of Amazon generally, and these stores specifically in not having staff, that it's supposed to be cheaper? I think you've pinpointed the reason it failed, but I can't imagine why they thought it was going to succeed at those prices.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the long-term goal but in reality it was not yet cheaper. Automation often proves more difficult than one would expect.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#285

Post by crazygringo »

philistine wrote: post #247
crazygringo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And according to Google Maps there are 9 Amazon Go stores in NYC right now, so this would still leave 7 . Which is just business as usual, figuring out which stores in which locations turn out to be most profitable.

You're right, but it's weird for such a tech-focused company to close stores in such a fashion, because we're used to the giant margins of tech. Apple has never closed that many stores that quickly.

Apple stores are famous for being some of the most profitable stores mankind has ever created. And there aren't that many of them.

These Amazon stores are just local convenience stores. They're selling candy bars. And Amazon is a much more "experimental" company than Apple -- they launch and shut down stuff all the time to iterate and learn. This isn't about penny-pinching or margins, it's about finding product-market fit.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#286

Post by emodendroket »

Spivak wrote: post #188
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting quinoa in everything and assuming the addressable market had more disposable income seems like one of the signs of the last bubble.

Why are people so weird about food? What about quinoa made it associated with rich yuppies? If you didn’t already know you would probably assume the main consumers would be dudes who want their chicken and carb to have even more protein.

Because nobody really ate it in the US and then it was everywhere it was a fad among rich yuppies. Yeah peasants ate it in South America (there were even newspaper editorials chastising yuppies for denying poor people their quinoa supply by eating it for frivolous reasons) but so what?

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#287

Post by olyjohn »

asdfiwerio wrote: post #142
wokwokwok wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I agree with you; it’s incomprehensible to me someone would go there without an app or at least their device logged into the Amazon website. …but, let’s be charitable and say some has lost their phone or whatever; it’s not totally unreasonable to expect some kind of special process for it. …turns out, there was a special process for it. Without a receipt. Oh well… /shrug Some people are just weird about it. L…

[flagged]

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Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#288

Post by roughly »

jarjoura wrote: post #238
jrochkind1 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment just made something click for me. CVS (a drug store) by me has also gotten rid of cashiers... but for self-checkout. So have Royal Farms, a regional gas station/convenience store chain. At both places, if you really try, you can maybe get a cashier at a single human cashier counter, but it's normally unstaffed, and everyone directed to the multiple self check out stations. (I think USA readers know what…

I too prefer human check-out lines. I always find that self-checkout system that everyone uses to be slower and clunky. The worst is at the grocery store where I have to search and find each item of produce, weigh it and then carefully place it in the bag. If any step in that flow goes slightly wrong, the system freezes and waits for an employee to come by and check what I'm doing. However, in the "fast casual" space…

I prefer human check-out lines because I don't particularly like having to do work for the store I'm shopping at.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#289

Post by olyjohn »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #105
everdrive wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different because there's a long-standing precedent that you don't need to install a smartphone app to use a store.

Sure, but Amazon Go is, as the comment you replied to states, a store which literally is built to require an app to use . This argument is thrown out the window when you shop at a store which explicitly and from its inception has required this. As the commenter stated, > So then why attempt to go to a store that’s entirely based on using the app?

So let's say I don't shop at Amazon Go because I just never cared and had no idea what it was. But I am a frequent Amazon.com shopper. I return an Item and it tells me a list of places I can take it. I see Amazon Go listed just like the UPS store. Or just like any other drop location. So I go to the Amazon Go store just assuming it's like every other store in the entire world. Only to find it's closed to me because I didn't bring the app with me. Does that make any sense to people? Why is this so hard to figure out why someone might be confused when they get there to just drop off a goddamn box?

Why don't the people in the store have some flexibility to let you in? God forbid someone besides a computer has to make a decision.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#290

Post by cavisne »

kentosi wrote: post #8

Slightly misleading title. They're closing 8 of their stores across NYC, SF, etc, and this is after they just opened a few more across the US.

And the 2 “closed” in seattle have been boarded up for some time, they are in an area that became even higher crime during Covid and never really recovered.
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