Amazon chooses UK for its first general store outside the US
First food, now everything else. Amazon has just opened its first general store in the UK, the first outside the United States. The 4-star shop, so called because it sells a changing range of the products customers rate most highly, stocks everything from books to toys to home products to technology.
The new 3,500 sq ft (325 sq m) shop at Bluewater shopping centre in Kent will sell around 2,000 of its best-rated products at the same price they are sold online. Each price tag includes the customer star rating on Amazon and the number of reviews the item has received.
Customers do not need to have an Amazon account to buy in the shop, but account holders receive special discounts. Shoppers will also be able to collect items ordered online and to return products without the need to re-package and label the parcel.
The retail giant uses data from its online business to see which items are most popular with consumers and will target the offering to local shoppers, changing the displays regularly.
The opening has long been planned and was postponed by the pandemic. “It is an exciting milestone,” said Andy Jones, director, Amazon 4-star UK. “I’ve been working on this for the past two years so we are obviously really keen to get customers in and see what they think.”
New concept has worked well in US
The model has worked really well in shopping malls in the US, said Jones, and that is why Bluewater was chosen as a location.
The first 4-star shop launched in New York in 2018 and since then Amazon has opened over 30 stores in 17 US States. The group would not confirm if the Bluewater store is a one-off or is intended to be the first of many physical stores in the UK and Europe.
Retail experts believe that the Bluewater store is a trial for Amazon, an opportunity to test the market, to understand how the physical and digital world interact and see how customers respond to products.
The retail giant has already opened six grocery convenience stores in the UK introducing checkout-free technology. Earlier this year it even opened its first-ever high-tech hairdressing salon in Spitalfields in London, featuring an augmented-reality mirror that shows clients what different styles, colours and haircuts would look like.
