Amazon has been toying with the idea of a physical brick and motor store for quite awhile. The Seattle based company is taking the first few tentative steps towards retail by opening a temporary pop up store on 34th Street in Manhattan across the street from the Empire State Building just in time for this year’s holiday season.
The experimental pop-up store will function as a small warehouse, holding limited inventory for same-day deliveries only in New York. If a customer orders a product online, they can visit the store and pick it up in person.
The store also intends on showing off the complete modern lineup of Kindle e-Readers, tablets, smartphones and Fire TV. This will give customers a chance to play with the tech in person and have experienced reps to walk people through the key features. Amazon will also be selling the hardware and running daily contests.
Amazon has been experimenting with temporary retail locations since December 2013, when it ran one in San Francisco. During the summer of 2014 Amazon took the show on the road to China and went to a series of locations in Shanghai and Beijing.
If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere, says the old adage. Media and customers will likely be flocking to this retail outlet to gain insight on how Amazon does brick and motor.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.