Much of Amazon"s success has been based on replacing traditional brick-and-mortar locations for buying things with online shopping, but it seems the e-commerce behemoth wants to take the fight directly to physical stores with it Amazon Go.
The company initially started testing its concept near the end of 2016, and it finally said it was ready to open it to the public earlier this year. Now, a second one could be opening as early as this fall, according to a report from GeekWire.
The new store will still be located in the city of Seattle, where the current one is also open right now, but it"ll be on the first floor of the recently-opened Madison Center building. It"s expected to have an area of 3,000 square feet, significantly more than the 1,800 square feet of its current store, but no more details are known at this time.
The idea behind Amazon Go is to get rid of the most annoying part of shopping at a retail store: the checkout lines. Customers simply check their Amazon Go app when entering the store and a powerful surveillance and computer system keeps track of which items are taken or put back in place, allowing Amazon to charge users on the app rather than paying a cashier.
The concept of checkout-free stores has also got the interest of other companies, such as Microsoft, which was recently reported to be looking into something similar, and it could give traditional retailers a run for their money.
Source: GeekWire via Digital Trends