Amazon Go Shutters 8 Stores

Amazon struggles to figure out physical retail amid an overall corporate slowdown.

March 06, 2023

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Amazon is closing four Amazon Go stores in San Francisco and two each in New York City and Seattle. The cashierless stores feature Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology.

“Like any physical retailer, we periodically assess our portfolio of stores and make optimization decisions along the way,” Amazon spokesperson Jessica Martin said in a statement. “In this case, we’ve decided to close a small number of Amazon Go stores in Seattle, New York City, and San Francisco. We remain committed to the Amazon Go format, operate more than 20 Amazon Go stores across the U.S., and will continue to learn which locations and features resonate most with customers as we keep evolving our Amazon Go stores.”

In January, Amazon announced it would lay off as many as 18,000 employees. Last week it confirmed that it had paused work on its new HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia.

Amazon “has long struggled to conquer the physical retail space and has been changing up strategies every so often. It used to have 87 retail pop-up kiosks across the U.S., but the company shut them down before the pandemic hit. And in 2022, Amazon closed down all 68 of its physical bookstores, pop-up locations and 4-star shops in the U.S. and UK,” Engadget reported.

SFGATE reported that it “learned the company put its giant Dogpatch warehouse up for lease in San Francisco, and earlier this year, it abandoned a 29-acre property in the Bay Area suburb of Milpitas.”

NACS Magazine covered the rollout of Amazon Go in 2017.

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