Amazon Department Stores

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
Alpha8472
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Amazon Department Stores

Post by Alpha8472 »

Amazon will open department stores to compete with stores such as Macy's. They will be smaller than a typical Macy's, but offer similar items.

Macy's is countering this by opening Toys R Us stores inside of their stores.
Last edited by Alpha8472 on August 19th, 2021, 9:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
arizonaguy
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Re: Anazon Department Stores

Post by arizonaguy »

Alpha8472 wrote: August 19th, 2021, 3:29 pm Amazon will open department stores to compete with stores such as Macy's. They will be smaller than a typical Macy's, but offer similar items.

Macy's is countering this by opening Toys R Us stores inside of their stores.
I've felt for a while that Amazon's ticket is a supercenter type store offering the best selling items in all of its categories (apparel, grocery, technology, books). Something akin to a Walmart Supercenter or Meijer but with greater use of technology.

These smaller stores would make more sense if they were more of the smaller Target concept (where, again, there are curated versions of all of their product categories) as opposed to a clothing only type store.
storewanderer
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Re: Anazon Department Stores

Post by storewanderer »

I guess they got tired of terrorizing the grocery industry so why not go back to beating up on the long beaten up department store industry. So Amazon is going to open 30k square foot department stores. Typical department stores are six times that size.

Is it even legitimate to call something that is only 30k square feet a department store?

I guess by that measure you could practically call a Dollar General a "department store."
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Re: Anazon Department Stores

Post by mbz321 »

storewanderer wrote: August 19th, 2021, 5:26 pm I guess they got tired of terrorizing the grocery industry so why not go back to beating up on the long beaten up department store industry. So Amazon is going to open 30k square foot department stores. Typical department stores are six times that size.

Is it even legitimate to call something that is only 30k square feet a department store?

I guess by that measure you could practically call a Dollar General a "department store."
I was going to say, when I read into an article earlier and it said 30k, I literally laughed out loud.
If it's anything as mediocre as their Amazon Fresh stores (I live near their first PA location that just opened two weeks ago and it was very underwhelming!), I don't see it going anywhere.

As for Toys r' Us in Macy's, I think the ship has sailed for both brands...a dead company in a dying one usually goes nowhere.
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Re: Anazon Department Stores

Post by arizonaguy »

mbz321 wrote: August 19th, 2021, 7:53 pm
storewanderer wrote: August 19th, 2021, 5:26 pm I guess they got tired of terrorizing the grocery industry so why not go back to beating up on the long beaten up department store industry. So Amazon is going to open 30k square foot department stores. Typical department stores are six times that size.

Is it even legitimate to call something that is only 30k square feet a department store?

I guess by that measure you could practically call a Dollar General a "department store."
I was going to say, when I read into an article earlier and it said 30k, I literally laughed out loud.
If it's anything as mediocre as their Amazon Fresh stores (I live near their first PA location that just opened two weeks ago and it was very underwhelming!), I don't see it going anywhere.

As for Toys r' Us in Macy's, I think the ship has sailed for both brands...a dead company in a dying one usually goes nowhere.
Amazon is a rather underwhelming retailer in terms of physical stores it seems. It's clear that physical stores are an afterthought and they don't seem to put their full effort into them. Wall Street seems to view them as some game changer to be feared but really they're just picking off the scraps from other mismanaged entities.
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Re: Anazon Department Stores

Post by storewanderer »

arizonaguy wrote: August 19th, 2021, 8:57 pm
Amazon is a rather underwhelming retailer in terms of physical stores it seems. It's clear that physical stores are an afterthought and they don't seem to put their full effort into them. Wall Street seems to view them as some game changer to be feared but really they're just picking off the scraps from other mismanaged entities.
The quality of Whole Foods has really nosedived under Amazon... every time I go into the store, I forget where I am. Whole Foods went from being an excellent tip top operation to just a so so operator. They aren't - bad- by any means. But they are no longer excellent.

Everything Amazon does, it does for a reason. These marginal physical stores are probably on purpose to make customers realize they aren't missing out by going to the store so they can just go ahead and stay online and order online.
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Re: Amazon Department Stores

Post by arizonaguy »

Interesting take on the Amazon department stores:

https://gizmodo.com/amazon-s-expansion- ... 1847516632
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Re: Amazon Department Stores

Post by jamcool »

Sounds like a modern version of the catalog stores like Best and Service Merchandise
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Re: Amazon Department Stores

Post by storewanderer »

Well in about 4 years when they have 5-10 of these stores open, hopefully a few of us who post here can go observe them and see what we think.
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Re: Amazon Department Stores

Post by ClownLoach »

arizonaguy wrote: August 21st, 2021, 9:11 am Interesting take on the Amazon department stores:

https://gizmodo.com/amazon-s-expansion- ... 1847516632
I still think that as long as Wall Street pushes this omnichannel agenda - and as long as Amazon continues to think that they need to dominate the grocery business - the likely outcome is going to be a Amazon-Target merger.

Apparently Amazon is aggressively targeting (pardon the pun) management teams from neighboring Target stores when they are opening these new grocery stores. They offer them big incentives to jump ship to Amazon-hurting the competition and helping to steal the institutional knowledge of Target. No surprise that they've probably gained enough insight into Target operations to make little clones of them.

Target meanwhile seems to continue to be satisfied building the little 30K-40K stores, now with even less rhyme or reason to location. I can tell you there are far more of these small boxes under construction than Target lists on their website and they are moving fast to complete and open them - something far different from the Target of old that would announce a new store years before groundbreaking. (Maybe they learned from their Canadian disaster?). Right now Huntington Beach and Newport Beach have new small format Target stores well underway that have yet to be announced. Amazon has an unannounced store almost completed in Huntington Beach just a few blocks away.

Now Amazon wants to build the same kind of small discount store Target keeps putting up.

There just isn't enough room for Target, Amazon and Walmart to all be doing the same things. Consolidation is inevitable unless someone goes and convinces Wall Street that these retailers can't do everything they want them to AND maintain the same or less labor.
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