Amazon's First Physical Store

The title says it all.

I've been waiting for this move for years now as it is the obvious next step.  Traditional brick & mortar retailers have increasingly become eCommerce companies.  eCommerce companies must also become increasingly like traditional retailers if they want to keep growing.

Here is the story:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/11/amazons-first-brick-and-mortar-store-one-big-ad-for-the-amazon-app/

Here is a snippet from the piece:

SEATTLE—On Tuesday, after years of rumors and speculation, Amazon launched a brick-and-mortar store—the kind of place that it has frequently been accused of putting out of business for over 20 years. We had to see what it was all about.

So we got in the car and drove to Seattle's famed University Village, the city's leading upscale outdoor mall, and we did something we never thought we’d do: we walked into an Amazon-branded store, handed money to a human, and left with a book. The future is now.

If this is the future of neighborhood bookstores, however, we're not entirely excited. We took a few of Amazon Books' opening day hiccups and kinks in stride, and we saw some ways that the store could provide a unique and pleasing shopping experience, but for the most part, we found the shop—and its reliance on the Amazon smartphone app—something that we had no desire to ever return to again.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant