Amazon on the High Street?
The Times are reporting that Amazon is making secret enquiries to setting up shop in a couple of key locations in out cities!
There’s nothing official as yet, and it may just be that as a good company Amazon is keeping an open mind to its future options. Although as the Times points out, this is a definite departure from the tried and tested online retailing formula.
We lost the Virgin Megastores (later Zavvi) from our high streets earlier this year andthere are rumors abound that Borders is about to close shop… they’re running closing down sales all over the country. On the one hand this leads to some prime, large vacant property.. but it also raises the question, do we need Amazon on our high street?
The claim is bolstered by the stat that 18% of Argo’s online sales are picked up in store and for high price tag items such as TV’s this could be as much as 50% for the Christmas period. I’m not exactly sure why you’d go to the hassle of carrying a TV down a high street to you car, instead of having UPS deliver it though, especially if there was no financial gain.
One of my favorite features of Amazon.com is the seamless integrated 3rd party sellers. They’re a great resource for out of print items. If they could integrate this into their high street stores as some sort of Amazon Market, that would be an excellent addition to our high streets and probably a great boon to the fledgling local 2nd handstore. Although whether they’d want Bernard and Manny running riot is another matter.
It’ll be interesting to see how HMV do tomorrow. They own the HMV music stores,Waterstones book stores and 50% of online digital music / ebook retailer 7digital. In their boots I’d consider looking at some of that vacant Megastore / Borders property and consolidating the group onto one site, instead of operating out of two units on a high street. A coffee shop wouldn’t go a miss either.
This is my first post in a long time. I’m hoping to begin being a little more active again.
Update:
Amazon have moved to debunk these claims, said a spokesman: “We have no plans to open physical retail stores anywhere in the world.” Which is a pity, could have been fun.
HMV ended the day up 3.4%
