Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: February 21st, 2023, 10:20 pm

Their statements to the public are that they are going to optimize this format to make customers love it, then get the zombie stores all opened, raise the "Mission Accomplished" banner, and take over the world. ... Eliminating district leadership is the red flag. If they need to fix these stores to make them profitable they need more leadership and supervision to make the changes and turn the corner. My contacts were in the district HR sectors and all were let go. Now we know the DMs are gone too. A retail store without a DM breaks quickly. Sales, profit and execution will get even worse. Heck with districts in place there was no consistency of operation or standard.

Anecdotal observation: Dash Cart stores have much better traffic and sales than Just Walk Out stores. And even if the carts cost $10K a piece right now (unsubstantiated rumor I heard) that is still way cheaper than the camera wiring jobs. Again could be ten million or more for the cameras, wiring and expected server equipment in the back for Just Walk Out stores.
Do you think the elimination of the district leadership they had which obviously wasn't working out well, may have been deliberate? And then they will bring in new people who know what they are doing and try to get some control over the situation? This is Amazon we are talking about and I am not confident they will go that route. Plus those Just Walk Out Stores anyone with any retail background is going to say to demolish "Just Walk Out" and start over... and I am sure Just Walk Out is a sacred cow for Amazon that anyone who suggests removing will be fired immediately.

Just thinking of Just Walk Out annoys me.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by Alpha8472 »

There is a Chevron Extra Mile Convenience store in San Ramon, California with a Just Walk Out style app called Grabango. That just walk out style feature is also a miserable failure. No one uses it. All this technology is supposed to do something. Perhaps save on labor or just seem really high tech. It does not do either of those things very well.

It certainly does not draw more customers to the store or increase sales in any way.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: February 21st, 2023, 11:33 pm
ClownLoach wrote: February 21st, 2023, 10:20 pm

Their statements to the public are that they are going to optimize this format to make customers love it, then get the zombie stores all opened, raise the "Mission Accomplished" banner, and take over the world. ... Eliminating district leadership is the red flag. If they need to fix these stores to make them profitable they need more leadership and supervision to make the changes and turn the corner. My contacts were in the district HR sectors and all were let go. Now we know the DMs are gone too. A retail store without a DM breaks quickly. Sales, profit and execution will get even worse. Heck with districts in place there was no consistency of operation or standard.

Anecdotal observation: Dash Cart stores have much better traffic and sales than Just Walk Out stores. And even if the carts cost $10K a piece right now (unsubstantiated rumor I heard) that is still way cheaper than the camera wiring jobs. Again could be ten million or more for the cameras, wiring and expected server equipment in the back for Just Walk Out stores.
Do you think the elimination of the district leadership they had which obviously wasn't working out well, may have been deliberate? And then they will bring in new people who know what they are doing and try to get some control over the situation? This is Amazon we are talking about and I am not confident they will go that route. Plus those Just Walk Out Stores anyone with any retail background is going to say to demolish "Just Walk Out" and start over... and I am sure Just Walk Out is a sacred cow for Amazon that anyone who suggests removing will be fired immediately.

Just thinking of Just Walk Out annoys me.
We knew they let go a lot of people in charge of this operation, but it is only now starting to become apparent that the ship is completely adrift with just a few people in charge. It really sounds like consultants are currently in charge, again firms like Accenture or AlixPartners that specialize in "fixing companies" so that they can claim "we tried everything to fix it" which is probably necessary as otherwise they aren't acting in the best interest of shareholders. Plus with all that highly paid overhead gone in the office and field they slow the bleeding. But I'm sure the consultants will tell them what they don't want to hear, that the Just Walk Out tech is not ready for prime time and must be mothballed to have any chance of recovering customer loyalty and brand image. So the consultants may move some fixtures around and change some signs, suggest some operating policies that are best practices elsewhere etc. but the net result will be the stores aren't profitable and the Just Walk Out stores especially are a brand killer. They let this grow and snowball into nearly a billion dollar loss when it's all said and done and actually needed to take on debt. There are a lot of institutional and even government related shareholders of Amazon, for example CalPERS and probably every major retirement focused mutual fund. When they have to pull the plug on this "very expensive hobby" there will be shareholders rights lawsuits because of the magnitude of the loss. I know early discussions on this board were that "Amazon is a tech company and this won't be a big deal" but the reality is that they let it grow into a massive money drain beyond any of our expectations. They're getting negative attention from municipalities, states and even Congress for the building of unopened stores which in some cases displaced operating grocery stores. This isn't like Tesco where they got to leave the country to escape their mess and use the bankruptcy court. $720 Million is a lot of money to lose without warning on a handful of grocery stores in a company hobby. There are likely laws that could be claimed to have been broken around disclosure to shareholders that this much money was at stake in the failing grocery operation.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by Romr123 »

ClownLoach wrote: February 22nd, 2023, 7:27 am
storewanderer wrote: February 21st, 2023, 11:33 pm
ClownLoach wrote: February 21st, 2023, 10:20 pm

Their statements to the public are that they are going to optimize this format to make customers love it, then get the zombie stores all opened, raise the "Mission Accomplished" banner, and take over the world. ... Eliminating district leadership is the red flag. If they need to fix these stores to make them profitable they need more leadership and supervision to make the changes and turn the corner. My contacts were in the district HR sectors and all were let go. Now we know the DMs are gone too. A retail store without a DM breaks quickly. Sales, profit and execution will get even worse. Heck with districts in place there was no consistency of operation or standard.

Anecdotal observation: Dash Cart stores have much better traffic and sales than Just Walk Out stores. And even if the carts cost $10K a piece right now (unsubstantiated rumor I heard) that is still way cheaper than the camera wiring jobs. Again could be ten million or more for the cameras, wiring and expected server equipment in the back for Just Walk Out stores.
Do you think the elimination of the district leadership they had which obviously wasn't working out well, may have been deliberate? And then they will bring in new people who know what they are doing and try to get some control over the situation? This is Amazon we are talking about and I am not confident they will go that route. Plus those Just Walk Out Stores anyone with any retail background is going to say to demolish "Just Walk Out" and start over... and I am sure Just Walk Out is a sacred cow for Amazon that anyone who suggests removing will be fired immediately.

Just thinking of Just Walk Out annoys me.
We knew they let go a lot of people in charge of this operation, but it is only now starting to become apparent that the ship is completely adrift with just a few people in charge. It really sounds like consultants are currently in charge, again firms like Accenture or AlixPartners that specialize in "fixing companies" so that they can claim "we tried everything to fix it" which is probably necessary as otherwise they aren't acting in the best interest of shareholders. Plus with all that highly paid overhead gone in the office and field they slow the bleeding. But I'm sure the consultants will tell them what they don't want to hear, that the Just Walk Out tech is not ready for prime time and must be mothballed to have any chance of recovering customer loyalty and brand image. So the consultants may move some fixtures around and change some signs, suggest some operating policies that are best practices elsewhere etc. but the net result will be the stores aren't profitable and the Just Walk Out stores especially are a brand killer. They let this grow and snowball into nearly a billion dollar loss when it's all said and done and actually needed to take on debt. There are a lot of institutional and even government related shareholders of Amazon, for example CalPERS and probably every major retirement focused mutual fund. When they have to pull the plug on this "very expensive hobby" there will be shareholders rights lawsuits because of the magnitude of the loss. I know early discussions on this board were that "Amazon is a tech company and this won't be a big deal" but the reality is that they let it grow into a massive money drain beyond any of our expectations. They're getting negative attention from municipalities, states and even Congress for the building of unopened stores which in some cases displaced operating grocery stores. This isn't like Tesco where they got to leave the country to escape their mess and use the bankruptcy court. $720 Million is a lot of money to lose without warning on a handful of grocery stores in a company hobby. There are likely laws that could be claimed to have been broken around disclosure to shareholders that this much money was at stake in the failing grocery operation.
Cabling as thick as your wrist checkerboarding the entire store doesn't come cheap. The store in E. Pasadena was -not- in a pedestrian area in the slightest. Stick a fork in it--its done. Wherever possible--welcome to your newest WFM. They have burned huge bridges.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by ClownLoach »

Romr123 wrote: February 22nd, 2023, 8:30 am
ClownLoach wrote: February 22nd, 2023, 7:27 am
storewanderer wrote: February 21st, 2023, 11:33 pm

Do you think the elimination of the district leadership they had which obviously wasn't working out well, may have been deliberate? And then they will bring in new people who know what they are doing and try to get some control over the situation? This is Amazon we are talking about and I am not confident they will go that route. Plus those Just Walk Out Stores anyone with any retail background is going to say to demolish "Just Walk Out" and start over... and I am sure Just Walk Out is a sacred cow for Amazon that anyone who suggests removing will be fired immediately.

Just thinking of Just Walk Out annoys me.
We knew they let go a lot of people in charge of this operation, but it is only now starting to become apparent that the ship is completely adrift with just a few people in charge. It really sounds like consultants are currently in charge, again firms like Accenture or AlixPartners that specialize in "fixing companies" so that they can claim "we tried everything to fix it" which is probably necessary as otherwise they aren't acting in the best interest of shareholders. Plus with all that highly paid overhead gone in the office and field they slow the bleeding. But I'm sure the consultants will tell them what they don't want to hear, that the Just Walk Out tech is not ready for prime time and must be mothballed to have any chance of recovering customer loyalty and brand image. So the consultants may move some fixtures around and change some signs, suggest some operating policies that are best practices elsewhere etc. but the net result will be the stores aren't profitable and the Just Walk Out stores especially are a brand killer. They let this grow and snowball into nearly a billion dollar loss when it's all said and done and actually needed to take on debt. There are a lot of institutional and even government related shareholders of Amazon, for example CalPERS and probably every major retirement focused mutual fund. When they have to pull the plug on this "very expensive hobby" there will be shareholders rights lawsuits because of the magnitude of the loss. I know early discussions on this board were that "Amazon is a tech company and this won't be a big deal" but the reality is that they let it grow into a massive money drain beyond any of our expectations. They're getting negative attention from municipalities, states and even Congress for the building of unopened stores which in some cases displaced operating grocery stores. This isn't like Tesco where they got to leave the country to escape their mess and use the bankruptcy court. $720 Million is a lot of money to lose without warning on a handful of grocery stores in a company hobby. There are likely laws that could be claimed to have been broken around disclosure to shareholders that this much money was at stake in the failing grocery operation.
Cabling as thick as your wrist checkerboarding the entire store doesn't come cheap. The store in E. Pasadena was -not- in a pedestrian area in the slightest. Stick a fork in it--its done. Wherever possible--welcome to your newest WFM. They have burned huge bridges.
I walked one with a network engineer and he said the visible cabling and switches installed would be in the millions, plus the electrical for them and God knows what is in the back that its all connected to. He said easily they spent more on the cameras and wiring than the rest of the store combined.

He has personally wired up Walmart Supercenter server racks and said the Amazon Fresh had more equipment in one aisle than a Walmart. Somehow they went from building a moderately expensive new store to a astronomically expensive one by adding Just Walk Out, then their inexperience was revealed when they tried to run these totally different operations the same way.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by storewanderer »

And I still think their stupid Just Walk Out "technology" is a bunch of people sitting in a camera room somewhere assigned to "watch you" walk around the store and zoom in on what you are buying and tally it up.

Otherwise why is there such a wide variance in how long it takes to receive a receipt after you leave the store? First it was a couple hours, but I've heard reports of people not receiving receipts for 12+ hours after leaving.

I also wonder how many errors there are (I have only been undercharged by Just Walk Out, not overcharged, though as a result of the undercharge a basket coupon didn't apply so there was that).
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: February 22nd, 2023, 11:30 pm And I still think their stupid Just Walk Out "technology" is a bunch of people sitting in a camera room somewhere assigned to "watch you" walk around the store and zoom in on what you are buying and tally it up.

Otherwise why is there such a wide variance in how long it takes to receive a receipt after you leave the store? First it was a couple hours, but I've heard reports of people not receiving receipts for 12+ hours after leaving.

I also wonder how many errors there are (I have only been undercharged by Just Walk Out, not overcharged, though as a result of the undercharge a basket coupon didn't apply so there was that).
I think the secret is the use of a cart versus the other suggested offerings such as shopping into a bag. The carts each have a unique barcode "license plate" on top so the camera system can more easily track item to basket. The few times I tried it with a cart the system sent a receipt relatively quickly although I was not charged for the two most expensive items I purchased. The one time I tried following the model of doing a quick shop into a bag without any cart it took at least 12 hours to send a receipt for the 4 items I bought.

This technology is solving a problem that doesn't exist. It isn't hard to check out in a normal store unless it is poorly operated (no staffing) and it's much cheaper to fix that problem than spend tens of millions of dollars in cameras and wiring and servers. It is remarkably hard to shop an Amazon Just Walk Out store. And the reality is that they can't really make it harder by trying to train their customers on how to use it effectively enough for the system to capture the barcode to cart pairing it needs to rapidly calculate the total. They have customers every single day that cannot even figure out how to get past the gate at the front of the Fresh store and leave laughing about how stupid the concept is then tell all their friends they couldn't figure out how to enter a grocery store because they have added too much friction to the front door.

The technology works fine in the small transaction, small sku count model. I tried it multiple times at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle and it was absolutely a game changer because they made it feel simple. Swipe your card at the gate and go. (I want to say they had signs to the effect of It's as easy as 1-2-3, swipe your card to enter (if you don't have an Amazon account enter your phone number for a text receipt) - grab whatever you want - and go right through the exit!) But that was it, walk in and grab a beer and snack then walk right out and the receipt was sent in mere seconds. Sporting events normally are a huge headache with unnecessary long lines and this tech works flawlessly there. Because they didn't need to dedicate space to a checkout counter there were wide aisles and no crowds. There was a employee at each gate to help if needed and I'm going to assume that if the store became too crowded they would form a queue but it would still be faster than a traditional concession. So it would seem like the convenience store format would be perfect... But Amazon announced the closure of another wave of the "Go" convenience stores today which indicates that the concept is just not profitable there. We know the grocery stores probably just sell a few thousand dollars a day and must be hemorrhaging cash. So aside from the somewhat unique use of concession stands what exactly is a good use for this tech?
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by storewanderer »

I thought to use Just Walk Out at Amazon Fresh that you had to use a cart. The times I used it, I used a cart.

I knew in the Amazon Go format there would be no cart so these may be two different technologies going on here between the Amazon Go and the Amazon Fresh.

Convenience stores in most of the US need liquor and tobacco sales to survive. Cannot do Just Walk Out with those so that kills it.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: March 4th, 2023, 7:00 pm I thought to use Just Walk Out at Amazon Fresh that you had to use a cart. The times I used it, I used a cart.

I knew in the Amazon Go format there would be no cart so these may be two different technologies going on here between the Amazon Go and the Amazon Fresh.

Convenience stores in most of the US need liquor and tobacco sales to survive. Cannot do Just Walk Out with those so that kills it.
No cart requirement and nothing encouraging customers to take one. One of the many problems. Again this is harder to understand and get right than a normal store, and so far it seems like they've given us at least $40 worth of product that we weren't charged for. I can't imagine what the shrink is going to look like at inventory on those Just Walk Out stores.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: March 5th, 2023, 1:14 am

No cart requirement and nothing encouraging customers to take one. One of the many problems. Again this is harder to understand and get right than a normal store, and so far it seems like they've given us at least $40 worth of product that we weren't charged for. I can't imagine what the shrink is going to look like at inventory on those Just Walk Out stores.
I wonder if they've done physical inventory yet on these stores.

That may be the last shoe to drop...

Probably also why there are so many out of stocks.
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