Amazon"s cashier-less Go stores might be expanding outside the United States soon. According to The Telegraph, the typically-online retailer might be opening the first international Amazon Go store in London, more specifically near Oxford Circus. The location is one of the busiest shopping areas in Europe, so it"s no mystery that the company would see potential in building a store there.
The report indicates that Amazon is looking for a location with an area between 3,000 and 5,000 square feet, which would make it bigger than many of its current stores. This makes sense since the retailer wants this to be its flagship store in the UK.
Amazon Go has been expanding pretty quickly. The first store opened just this year, but there are already seven locations across Seattle, Chicago, and San Francisco. But Amazon"s plans for Go are even more ambitious, as it plans to open as many as 3,000 locations by 2021. In the short term, at least another store is planned to open in San Francisco this winter, and one more is expected to open in Chicago sometime in 2019.
The concept of stores without cashiers is still something of a novelty, and Amazon hasn"t had to face much competition so far. Microsoft is said to be working on technology that enables this too, though, and it will apparently be more open with its implementation than Amazon has been, licensing it to retailers rather than opening its own stores.
Source: The Telegraph via Campaign