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Amazon will shutter 68 brick-and-mortar stores

Amazon continues to put effort and funds into its grocery business.

Amazon will shutter 68 brick-and-mortar stores

Workers will reportedly receive a severance or the option to move to jobs at nearby Amazon stores.

Photo: Shinya Suzuki/Flickr

Amazon is closing down 68 store locations, including bookstores, pop-ups and home goods stores, across the U.S. and U.K., Reuters reported Wednesday.

Amazon opened its first physical retail bookstore in Seattle in 2015, then later opened 24 more. It also opened Amazon 4-star, a retail location that only sold products with a 4-star or more rating, in 2018, and has opened a slew of other pop-up shops in recent years.

These experiment retail spaces will all be shuttered, with its workers reportedly receiving a severance or the option to move to jobs at nearby Amazon stores. It's unclear when these retail locations will close, and Amazon did not immediately respond to request for comment.

But being in the brick-and-mortar space is far from over for the ecommerce behemoth. Amazon continues to put effort and funds into its grocery business, which make up a total of 2.4% of the U.S. grocery market compared to Walmart's 18%, according to CNBC. It also recently opened "Amazon Style," fashion retail experiment, which opened in Los Angeles in January.

“We’ve decided to close our Amazon 4-star, Books, and Pop Up stores, and focus more on our Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods Market, Amazon Go, and Amazon Style stores and our Just Walk Out technology," an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement to Protocol. "We remain committed to building great, long-term physical retail experiences and technologies, and we’re working closely with our affected employees to help them find new roles within Amazon.”

Nat Rubio-Licht

Nat Rubio-Licht is a Los Angeles-based news writer at Protocol. They graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in newspaper and online journalism in May 2020. Prior to joining the team, they worked at the Los Angeles Business Journal as a technology and aerospace reporter.

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