Amazon is closing two cashless Go stores in New York City, two in Seattle and four in San Francisco on April 1. GeekWire. The e-retail giant made the announcement on the same day it admitted it is pausing construction of its second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, as it reassesses its office needs in light of more and more people preferring to work at to work remotely. If Bloomberg notes, these are just Amazon’s latest cost-cutting measures amid slowing revenue growth. In January, the company expanded its planned job cuts from 10,000 to 18,000 positions, with the layoffs since then mostly affecting staff in its retail and recruiting divisions.
Company spokeswoman Jessica Martin told the publications in a statement: “Like any brick-and-mortar retailer, we periodically review our store portfolio and make optimization decisions along the way. We remain committed to the Amazon Go format, operating more than 20 Amazon Go formats. stores across the US and will continue to learn which locations and features resonate with customers the most.”
The internet retail giant’s Go stores are designed as high-tech stores equipped with cameras and sensors that can detect when products are taken and returned to the shelves. Customers can grab any item they want, which will be added to their virtual cart for online payment, and then walk out of the store without going through a cashier.
While Amazon still has more than 20 Go stores in the country, it has long struggled to capture the physical retail space and has occasionally changed strategy. It used to have 87 pop-up kiosks in the US, but the company closed them before the pandemic hit. And in 2022, Amazon closed all 68 brick-and-mortar bookstores, pop-up locations, and 4-star stores in the US and UK. But it wasn’t until February that CEO Andy Jassy said the company plans to go big with its brick-and-mortar grocery stores. He told the Financial times: “We are hopeful that in 2023 we will have a format that we want to go big on, physically.”
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