Amazon may be the dumbest physical store retailer in the business. Then again they might be the smartest.
Their news this week that they were shutting down the pair of Amazon Style stores that sold apparel is only the latest example of the online juggernaut saying never mind to physical formats. They’ve closed their Four Star mini-chain (really a godsend to shoppers given its lame product mix and merchandising strategy) as well as assorted grocery, book and convenience startups over the past year or two. Even some of the “just-walk-out” locations that were supposed to be the next big thing in the retailing business have closed, including at airports and other seemingly appropriate places.
Amazon Style’s closing gives those who believe the company doesn’t know a cash register from a shopping cart (real not virtual) one more piece of evidence that it will never get past the dot-com world. The stumbles with its Whole Foods brand further reinforce this take on things.
And that take is not wrong. Some of these stores have been dreadful and the company’s lack of understanding of what it takes to run a real store (and having the people on hand who do) is compelling enough. As good as Amazon has been online that’s how disappointing it’s been in-store.
But there’s another way to look at this. Amazon is not afraid to try new things, test new concepts and see if they work. And if they don’t, they are fast to pull the trigger. They’ve done it with hardware – anyone remember Amazon phones or Dash buttons? – with software and with physical stores. By pushing the proverbial envelope they continue to see where else they can be and what else they should be doing.
How many other retailing companies can make the same claim? Sure, Macy’s is rolling out smaller format stores and so too are Walmart and Target, but these are just variations on the same theme, just at a different scale. When was the last time one of these big national chains really tried something different?
Same for specialty chains like Best Buy, Gap and countless others. They continue to do the same thing in the same place in the same way, just changing colors and cuts each season. Maybe it’s a reason why many of these are struggling to adapt to changing shopping patterns and different demographics.
There’s some marketing adage somewhere that says if you’re not failing from time to time it means you’re not really pushing yourself to go for something new. At $400 billion in annual revenue Amazon can continue to test new concepts and formats and if they don’t work it’s largely a rounding error. In fact it would be that way for many of these other Big Box chains as well.
I’m sure the Amazon folks are not thrilled that many of these tests haven’t worked. Hope springs eternal in prototype store rollouts. But what’s that old saying, “To err is human, not to even give it a shot is just plain dumb.”
WarrensReport 