In the Summer of 2011 Borders closed the doors on their bookstores. Many accused Amazon of driving them out of business. The following Spring Amazon was once again being accused of a downturn in bookstore sales. Over the next few years other bookstores and even publishing house have accused Amazon of being a cause of the struggles for brick & mortar bookstores. Given all these struggles, especially if they are the cause, you would never expect Amazon to open their own brick & mortar bookstore.
That is just what they did when at 9:30 this morning, Nov 3, the Seattle-based e-commerce giant opened a physical bookstore in the University district. The bookstore will be called Amazon Booksand look much the same as any other bookstore. The one surprising difference in the Amazon store is there are no prices. The reason for the lack of prices is that the customers will be paying the same prices as online customers.
The bookstore marks a first for the online store that started in the mid 1990's. If this first store shows signs of success the company plans on opening up more bookstores across the country.
“It’s data with heart,” said Jennifer Cast, Vice President of Amazon books. “We’re taking the data we have and we’re creating physical places with it.”
The data she talks about is the top sellers list and the customer reviews posted on Amazon. As she later explains the data will not be the sole source for inventory in the bookstore. They will also use the sources most other bookstores use to figure out what to stock.
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