We reported back in February that Amazon was internally making a decision to open up a retail store. The news was picked up by CNN, Fox News, Thompson Reuters, and every major news source on the planet. Today, CEO Jeff Bezos talked about the company’s retail ambitions in an interview with Charlie Rose.
Jeff mentioned during the interview that “We would love to but only if we can have a truly differentiated idea. We don’t do a me-too product offering very well. When I look at physical retail stores, it’s very well served. The people who operate physical retail stores are very good at it. The question we would always have before we would embark on such an thing is what’s the idea, what would we do that would be different, how would it be better… we don’t want to be redundant. ” He also mentioned, “We want to do something that is uniquely Amazon, and if we can find that idea, and we haven’t found that idea yet, we would love to open Amazon stores.”
The first Amazon retail store is widely speculated to open in conjunction with the company’s new headquarters in downtown Seattle. Amazon is basically building a massive three block compass with over five different towers. We confirmed that the architect had mapped out a ground level retail bookstore that had e-readers in the window. Although we might have initially been wrong about the time frame, it does look like Amazon is taking the retail initiative seriously enough to talk about it publicly.
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.
