amazongo
Latest
Amazon says it'll roll out a new grocery store format next year
Amazon is wading further into the physical retail world as it confirmed plans to open a different type of grocery store in 2020. Reports earlier this year suggested Amazon was working on a low-cost grocery format as an alternative to Whole Foods and Amazon Go.
2018: The year Amazon became even harder to avoid
It's been ages since Amazon was just a place to buy books. But even now, it's still easy to think of the company as a big online store. Resist that urge. Amazon's size and scale mean it's almost preternaturally good at selling and delivering things, but the company's real job is to find ways to make itself indispensable. If you let it, Amazon will sell you groceries and entertain you. It will make clothes and appliances to fill your home with. It will give you a full-time, part-time or super-part-time job, depending on your circumstances. At this point, it seems perfectly feasible to live a life enveloped completely by Amazon. And while the idea of a single company having this many hooks into our lives can be (and for some, absolutely is) alarming, Amazon still found ways to broaden its reach in 2018.
Amazon aims to open checkout-free Go stores in office lobbies
The current nature of Amazon's no-checkout Go stores seems tailor-made for grabbing a quick bite to eat during a break from work, and the company is determined to seize on that opportunity. It just opened a tiny (450 square feet) Go store inside one of its Seattle offices to promote a version of its retail tech for building lobbies, hospitals and other places where you might want to rush in for a salad or sandwich. It's not only more economically viable for these spaces, it's easy to set up -- you can cart in pieces and "assemble it on site," Amazon's Gianna Puerini told Reuters.
Amazon's cashierless Go stores may come to an airport near you
Airport shopping is mostly about perfumes, booze and overpriced electronics, but that could soon change. Amazon has reportedly inquired about installing its cashierless Go stores at several US airports, according to Reuters. Emails from a public records request revealed that Amazon asked for meetings with managers at San Jose and Los Angeles international airports and received a positive response. "I am looking forward to moving forward with the Amazon Go technology at the airport," wrote one airport IT manager.
Amazon tests checkout-free shopping for larger stores
Amazon's checkout-free Go stores might hint at the future of retail, but they're small locations that aren't much good if you need more than lunch or a bag of chips. You might see more soon, though. Wall Street Journal sources say Amazon is testing a version of its computer vision-based shopping technology for larger stores. It's not certain how close the company might be to trying this in the real world (it's currently running in a Seattle space "formatted like a big store"). It won't shock you to hear where the tech might go if it's successful, however.
Walmart will open an Amazon Go-style Sam’s Club store
Walmart is continuing to copy pages from the Amazon playbook, this time with a version of its Sam's Club warehouse store where shoppers can check out by using their phones. The store, which takes some obvious influence from Amazon Go stores, will open up in Dallas under the name Sam's Club Now.
Amazon Go is the inevitable evolution of supermarket retail
Amazon's cashierless "Go" markets have popped up in San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago, promising patrons the "future of shopping": a frictionless grocery buying experience that relies on high-tech tracking technology instead of human interaction to get products off the shelves and into your canvas totes. This indeed may be the supermarket of the future, at least as Bezos envisions it, but not one that we couldn't have predicted. The development of the Go shopping experience is little more than the latest step in the logical evolution of retail.
NYC's first Amazon Go store will be in the financial district
We knew an Amazon Go store was coming to NYC, now we know where it will be stationed. Recode claims the cashierless convenience store will be located inside Manhattan's Brookfield Place -- a shopping and office complex across the street from the World Trade Center. Amazon isn't commenting on the grand opening, so there's no word on the ETA and what items it will stock.
Amazon could open 3,000 cashierless Go stores by 2021
Amazon now has four of its Go stores up and running -- three in Seattle and one in Chicago -- with at least one on the way in New York. And while we've heard that there are plans for San Francisco as well, that apparently is just the beginning, because the company is considering plans to open as many as 3,000 of its cashierless stores by 2021, Bloomberg reports.
Amazon opens its next cashier-less store in Chicago
Amazon's checkout-free convenience store is coming to the Windy City. The fourth Amazon Go location, and the first outside of Seattle, opens in Chicago on September 17th. Located on 113 S Franklin St, the store opens at 7am and closes at 8PM, Monday through Friday. Weekend warriors looking to experience the delights of Amazon Go are out of luck, however, as it's closed Saturday and Sunday.
Amazon Go competitor opens a cashierless store in San Francisco
A startup called Standard Cognition hopes to steal some of Amazon's thunder by opening a cashierless store in San Francisco -- Amazon Go currently has three stores, all in the Seattle area. Standard Cognition's store is open to the public now, and it's the first real-world test for the company's retail ambitions.
Amazon's checkout-free Go store is heading to New York
Amazon is getting ready to open an Amazon Go store in New York, The Information reports. Job listings for a new Amazon Go location popped up Thursday night and the company confirmed to The Information that it has plans for a store in the New York area. Amazon already has three of its cashierless stores up and running in Seattle -- the third opened earlier this week -- and it has plans to expand to Chicago and San Francisco as well.
Amazon opens its second checkout-free Go store in Seattle
The first Amazon Go store opened in January, allowing customers to buy items without having to go through a checkout process, and now Amazon has officially opened its second location. Located in downtown Seattle, the new location is a little smaller than the first -- 1,450 square feet versus 1,800 square feet -- and is only open weekdays between 7AM and 7PM as it's geared more towards office workers. The new store opened today.
Amazon is preparing another checkout-free retail store in Seattle
Amazon's experimental checkout-free retail store in Seattle formally opened to the greater public back in January and pulled off its liberating -- if unnerving -- concept: Scan the dedicated app upon entering, slip groceries in your basket and walk out the door, with a suite of cameras and facial recognition tech ensuring you're charged for what you walk out with. In light of its success, the company planned six more to open in 2018, and it seems one of those has just been spotted. A second Amazon Go appeared in downtown Seattle, and according to a statement provided to GeekWire, it's slated to open in Fall 2018.
Microsoft reportedly has its own cashierless store technology
While Amazon continues to test out its cashier and checkout-less Go stores, Reuters reports that Microsoft is working on similar technology. Besides a number of partners who are working on products in the vein of Amazon Go -- which allows shoppers to simply take items off the shelf, put them in their cart and leave with a bill automatically tabulated based on computer vision watching what they buy -- it has an internal team that has tried out using cameras attached to shopping carts and mobile apps. The report calls out a small team within the company's Business AI group dedicated to retail tech, and said CEO Satya Nadella recommended a device that could live on-site to manage cameras without transferring data to the cloud. Microsoft isn't new to the space and in 2017 it showed off a slew of retail-focused products at the National Retail Federation's Big Show event that included a version of the Skip mobile app that's in testing in grocery stores. With Skip, shoppers scan each item as they shop using the app, then check out on their phone when they've finished. Microsoft is a partner with the startup, and the app uses Azure on its backend. With Amazon Go stores opening soon in Chicago and San Francisco, we'll probably see more competition in the race to replace the checkout line.
Amazon will open checkout-free stores in Chicago and San Francisco
You no longer have to make a beeline to Seattle if you want to shop at an Amazon Go store. Amazon has posted job listings for store managers in both Chicago and San Francisco, making it clear where the automated stores are headed next. The company didn't confirm opening dates or locations in a response to the Seattle Times. However, there are already some clues: Curbed noted that Amazon has a building permit for a store in Chicago's Loop, while a San Francisco Chronicle report claimed that a store would open near Union Square.
Walmart says its grocery delivery will hit 100 new cities this year
Walmart and Amazon's rivalry is alive and well. The former announced today that it plans to expand its Online Grocery Delivery service -- currently available in six markets -- to over 100 metro areas across the US this year. Additionally, Walmart's Online Grocery Pickup service, which is available in 1,200 stores as of now, will reach 1,000 additional stores throughout 2018. The company says that with its planned delivery expansion, that service would then be available to over 40 percent of US households.
AiFi replicates Amazon Go's checkout-free shopping in any store
Bricks-and-mortar shopping could be about to change forever. Amazon pioneered the automated convenience store with its newly-opened Go supermarket, and now computer vision company AiFi is introducing the first scalable, checkout-free system for stores outside of Amazon's sphere of influence. The technology has the potential to turn enormous retail spaces and small mom-and-pop operations alike into shopping environments of the future, allowing customers to "grab and go" without the hassle of physically checking out.
Amazon may open up to six more automated stores this year
Amazon may have opened its automated convenience store a year late, but it looks like it's been a pretty big success. Recode learned that the company plans on opening six more of its Amazon Go stores in 2018. It's not clear where these stores will be located, though Recode reports that more locations are likely in Seattle, and Amazon is in talks with the developer of The Grove in Los Angeles.
Can Amazon Go help the unbanked go digital?
If Amazon's newly opened Go supermarket is any indicator, shopping with physical currency won't be an option for much longer. Instead of human cashiers (or even self-checkout stands), the store relies on a range of technology to know who's shopping and what they're buying. Amazon then automatically deducts the cost of your items from your bank account. From a turnstile entrance that identifies shoppers by scanning their smartphones to tracking cameras that know what is pulled from each shelf, Amazon Go bills itself as the shopping experience of the future.
