Reminds me of the eBay store scene from The 40-year-old Virgin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGxRg5I7r5s The future of e-commerce is bricks and mortar (?!)
That wasn't an eBay store, but her job was selling other people's junk on eBay for them. As for the future of e-commerce, it's whoever can get the product to me fastest. Brick and Mortar still wins that race, but lose on price more often than not.
There are a lot of products that bricks and mortar lose on, simply because they can't carry the diversity of inventory that ecommerce shops can access.
They ship by drone from the warehouse to the store in 30 minutes. You order something, 30 minutes later, after you drink an expensive latte and use their free wifi to watch some TV show from their network, you get your hard-to-find item, and you go home happy.
While I agree with you that it would definitely help their sales by selling it themselves vs. the blue shirts. I can't seem to think they will only sell Amazon products. Not to say they will sell substitutes of their products as well, I think it would be a missed opportunity to stock it only with Kindles, and Fire Phones. It would be surprising to me at least, if their main objective with this store front was to incr…
If they get into selling other people's stuff in person, they then have to compete with other people in the area on those prices, deal with support for those devices when they break. They also have to deal with all the attendant supply chain issues, etc. Supply chain for a warehouse is different than supply chain for the store. If too many people in alabama want something tomorrow that isn't in alabama warehouse, the…
I guess I am being too optimistic. I really enjoyed reading that response, and you brought to mind a lot of things I just didn't really consider. Supporting other peoples devices would be a hassle, and a huge undertaking who does zero of that currently. Since you've debunked my theories :), rethinking it maybe it's just a great way to advertise, and get people touch, and feel the phone in person with a great salesperson next to them. The article I think said it is suppose to be up before the holiday season. And why run a test store in New York, New York? I wouldn't ever suggest doing a test run in an extremely high end area like that. Maybe it's up for Nov, Dec, Jan.. and than disappears.
I could see Amazon using this as a NYC media presence, as much as a store. They could do readings by authors, launch events for Amazon original video content, Kindle product launches, and so on.
Also, six foot HDMI cables. Everybody needs those.
I don't know as much about NYC geography, but if they put one of these somewhere in the loop in Chicago I would definitely use it. I would much rather spend my lunch break walking down to the Amazon pickup depot than let a package sit on my front door all day.
Another Chicagoan here, I'm actually the exact opposite. I'd much rather have my package sitting in the lobby of my apartment than going down to Michigan Ave, dealing with a bunch of tourists, and waiting in line to pick up, idk, a big box of paper towels because I'm too lazy to go to the grocery store?
I live in a 3 flat and most of my Amazon packages sit just outside our building in plain sight. If the UPS guy had the skeleton key that the USPS has, I'd probably feel differently.
That wasn't an eBay store, but her job was selling other people's junk on eBay for them. As for the future of e-commerce, it's whoever can get the product to me fastest. Brick and Mortar still wins that race, but lose on price more often than not.
There are a lot of products that bricks and mortar lose on, simply because they can't carry the diversity of inventory that ecommerce shops can access.
Agreed. It's on the b&m stores to keep a product mix that will sell the most efficiently, and the ones who are surviving are the ones figuring that out. I'm lucky enough (or unlucky, depending on perspective) to live in a city with a Fry's - there aren't a lot of products NewEgg can win on if I'm feeling impatient, for example.
In many urban areas it can be challenging to receive packages, so having a pickup spot in the middle of several million people could well make sense. Apple's flagship Manhattan store famously does quite well as a showcase for their products and helps to sell millions for them. Amazon could be doing that math that for every user we get into the ecosystem we can extract X in lifetime value from book, video and app purc…
Cost to become Wal-Mart: $62,655,000,000 Based on store counts times conservative numbers on the total cost of a new Wal-Mart. They might try building a bunch of small stores, but they're definitely not going to try to become Wal-Mart.
Well, amazon does not plan to become walmart overnight...
Another Chicagoan here, I'm actually the exact opposite. I'd much rather have my package sitting in the lobby of my apartment than going down to Michigan Ave, dealing with a bunch of tourists, and waiting in line to pick up, idk, a big box of paper towels because I'm too lazy to go to the grocery store?
I live in a 3 flat and most of my Amazon packages sit just outside our building in plain sight. If the UPS guy had the skeleton key that the USPS has, I'd probably feel differently.
Wonder how long it will be until we start seeing subdivisions built around Distribution Centers, with robots delivering the goods almost immediately after ordering. 20 years?
With robot cars doing most of the work? Maybe 10 years, though it's hardly necessary that the subdivision gets build around the DC when you can build a DC close enough to the subdivision to make it worth your while.