Amazon to close all of its physical bookstores and '4-star' shops(reuters.com)
reuters.com
Amazon to close all of its physical bookstores and '4-star' shops
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/exclusive-amazon-close-all-its-physical-bookstores-4-star-shops-2022-03-02/
198 comments
I bought an electric kettle once from an Amazon Bookstore, but that was it. I may have bought a coffee once or twice. Like you, I walked in about 20 times previously.
> Often far too much of something. It's an expensive disorder I have.
We should form a support club or something, I'm the same as you even though I live half-way around the globe. Something tells me we're not the only ones.
We should form a support club or something, I'm the same as you even though I live half-way around the globe. Something tells me we're not the only ones.
> I'm physically incapable of visiting a good independent bookstore without buying something.
I'll join the club.
In Japanese, there's a word for it: tsundoku. It describes a person who buys books and mostly doesn't read them.
Often they pile up on the floor, on shelves, and assorted pieces of furniture.
Virtually my Audible resembles this.
I'll join the club.
In Japanese, there's a word for it: tsundoku. It describes a person who buys books and mostly doesn't read them.
Often they pile up on the floor, on shelves, and assorted pieces of furniture.
Virtually my Audible resembles this.
I'm also this way about wine. I don't feel an ounce of guilt because I'll drink each one when the time is right. That is equally true for books.
I"m guessing these people do not move very often. I have one rule when helping friends move, I don't move books.
Human curation is something that is definitely missing these days and was severely undervalued with the growth of the internet. I rarely conduct a Google search without appending "reddit" to the query. Because I know I want actual human answers. We are, ironically, using Google today as if it were the Yahoo! curated catalog of 1997. Because we can't trust that the links Google returns aren't some autogenerated SEO-driven affiliate link garbage.
The same applies to music. Spotify is missing that certain ingredient that local radios (before they were sold and cannibalized by Clear Channel/iHeartMedia) and early 1980s MTV really nailed. We want a knowledgeable human to guide us through the landscape of books, music, film, and everything else.
> Not "highest rated" or "most popular" - but books I wouldn't get otherwise exposed to that an employee has selected carry, and display.
In the past few years Netflix introduced their "Top 10" feature which is prominent near the top of their app. This was the reason I unsubscribed from Netflix. I had been a member since 2004. The "Top 10" feature reminded me on a daily basis that I have no interest in the content Netflix has. Previously I had assumed (because of their rather horrible discovery mechanisms) that Netflix had a much deeper catalog and I could find something to watch if I keep searching. The top 10 list made me finally realize their offerings simply were bad. The value of the service wasn't there.
The same applies to music. Spotify is missing that certain ingredient that local radios (before they were sold and cannibalized by Clear Channel/iHeartMedia) and early 1980s MTV really nailed. We want a knowledgeable human to guide us through the landscape of books, music, film, and everything else.
> Not "highest rated" or "most popular" - but books I wouldn't get otherwise exposed to that an employee has selected carry, and display.
In the past few years Netflix introduced their "Top 10" feature which is prominent near the top of their app. This was the reason I unsubscribed from Netflix. I had been a member since 2004. The "Top 10" feature reminded me on a daily basis that I have no interest in the content Netflix has. Previously I had assumed (because of their rather horrible discovery mechanisms) that Netflix had a much deeper catalog and I could find something to watch if I keep searching. The top 10 list made me finally realize their offerings simply were bad. The value of the service wasn't there.
I am trying to fix this with book browsing online, try shepherd.com and let me know ([email protected]). I go to authors and ask them to share 5 books around a topic/them they are passionate experts in, and then i try to connect it in different ways to make browsing fun :)
Only 10 months old and trying to integrate genre now…
Only 10 months old and trying to integrate genre now…
Dude... This is really good! If I wasn't on the most limited budget I've ever been on, I would have just bought like 3 books without even blinking.
I don't know how you managed to get such a large list of bookshelves already, but I'm impressed.
I don't know how you managed to get such a large list of bookshelves already, but I'm impressed.
Thank you, that is awesome to hear :)
Ya, I worked really hard in the early days to get a ton of lists and now I've built out a small PT team that helps me contact authors and shepherd them through the publishing process. We are adding ~400 lists a month, and it takes a TON of time to set it all up, vet it for quality, format, setup all the data, etc.
I've got some really great stuff coming, and I hope to leave beta toward this summer or fall.
Ya, I worked really hard in the early days to get a ton of lists and now I've built out a small PT team that helps me contact authors and shepherd them through the publishing process. We are adding ~400 lists a month, and it takes a TON of time to set it all up, vet it for quality, format, setup all the data, etc.
I've got some really great stuff coming, and I hope to leave beta toward this summer or fall.
I'm sure you already know this, but “genre” boundaries are fuzzy. (Some people refute the concept entirely, which I think is a bit silly.) There are several different ways to define each genre. If you can do some magic with your genre data that lets me sort some books into what I think of as genre classifications (say, if I consider Star Wars a fantasy work), then automagically lets me filter by that… Not sure how useful, or possible, that actually is, but it seemed like a good idea when I started writing the comment.
Apart from thinking that Minecraft was set in Washington D.C., it gave multiple good-seeming suggestions for all the random topics I thought to put into it. That's pretty impressive, especially given (or, perhaps, because) your data is manually curated. Have you considered supporting Bookwyrm-flavoured ActivityPub, for (potentially curated) reviews?
Apart from thinking that Minecraft was set in Washington D.C., it gave multiple good-seeming suggestions for all the random topics I thought to put into it. That's pretty impressive, especially given (or, perhaps, because) your data is manually curated. Have you considered supporting Bookwyrm-flavoured ActivityPub, for (potentially curated) reviews?
Yep, I am going to need to start by using BISAC or THEMA which are a pretty standardized format used in the industry. I am testing both now to figure out which I want to use, or if I could use a combo (if that his helpful).
BISAC has 1 to 5 categories assigned to a book, pretty standard.
THEMA is similar, but has a qualifier which is a cool concept. So you can add a location, age group, or other qualifiers to help define who the books is for.
Ya, right now we use NLP to analyze a bunch of data to to determine what the book is about. It works pretty well but I am working to improve some of that :).
"Have you considered supporting Bookwyrm-flavoured ActivityPub, for (potentially curated) reviews?"
I am not familiar, can you tell me more or send me a URL? I don't know what that is :) ([email protected] I added it to my list to check out via google search as well)
BISAC has 1 to 5 categories assigned to a book, pretty standard.
THEMA is similar, but has a qualifier which is a cool concept. So you can add a location, age group, or other qualifiers to help define who the books is for.
Ya, right now we use NLP to analyze a bunch of data to to determine what the book is about. It works pretty well but I am working to improve some of that :).
"Have you considered supporting Bookwyrm-flavoured ActivityPub, for (potentially curated) reviews?"
I am not familiar, can you tell me more or send me a URL? I don't know what that is :) ([email protected] I added it to my list to check out via google search as well)
https://bookwyrm.social/ is a project to basically make a group of decentralised book-based social media sites, a little like Goodreads (but on the Fediverse). Something being made available over ActivityPub isn't a copyright license to use it, but you could contact individual people and ask to be able to use their reviews, if that's something you wanted to do. (There's probably some degree of “permission by default” that you get, but as I'm not a copyright lawyer I tend to play it safe.)
Thanks, I'll check it out!
Ben this is pretty neat. I've lined up a couple of reads already.
Awesome thanks!
I am trying now to bring genres and other data in, my hope being that if you are on the WW2 page you can filter it to show only history, or only historical fiction, or even science fiction.
And, I would like to do similar on genre pages (yet to be built), so that if you are on a fantasy genre page, you can filter down to elves, dragons, or things like that.
Big technical challenges but I am going to see what I can do. This is something I've been wanting for a long time, and playing with some cool formats other than the current one to help people bump into awesome books/authors.
I am trying now to bring genres and other data in, my hope being that if you are on the WW2 page you can filter it to show only history, or only historical fiction, or even science fiction.
And, I would like to do similar on genre pages (yet to be built), so that if you are on a fantasy genre page, you can filter down to elves, dragons, or things like that.
Big technical challenges but I am going to see what I can do. This is something I've been wanting for a long time, and playing with some cool formats other than the current one to help people bump into awesome books/authors.
> Spotify is missing that certain ingredient that local radios
This was orignaly Pandora's big selling point.
Every track sent to them was analyzed by someone with a degree in music to help build a recommendation engine. It was a combination of algorithms and people.
I am not sure how well that scaled or if they still do that, for the longest time Pandora had a tiny selection of music and I presume the reason was their intake process.
This was orignaly Pandora's big selling point.
Every track sent to them was analyzed by someone with a degree in music to help build a recommendation engine. It was a combination of algorithms and people.
I am not sure how well that scaled or if they still do that, for the longest time Pandora had a tiny selection of music and I presume the reason was their intake process.
I'm glad I was able to satisfy my movie bucket list when Netflix still had a large catalog of DVDs.
Netflix today also has weird gaps, like if a show had 5 seasons, Netflix only has seasons 2 and 3 available.
Netflix today also has weird gaps, like if a show had 5 seasons, Netflix only has seasons 2 and 3 available.
The Netflix DVD recommendation system was fantastic. Massive selection of films, rankings based on what you liked, nothing seemed to be actively pushed at you. I certainly liked it better than the way they have their streaming site laid out.
I feel their interests were aligned with their customers with the dvds - now they’re almost adversarial as they want you to watch their content or the cheapest content.
It also didn’t hurt that the dvds had everything
It also didn’t hurt that the dvds had everything
You nailed it. Misalignment of incentives.
With DVDs, it cost the same to send A or B or Z, and they made more money if you rented more or got a more expensive subscription that let you get more. So, they were highly incentivized to have a huge catalog and send you stuff you actually wanted.
With streaming, they want to push certain content based on what they're paid by their content partners, or what SEO tells them you will accept, and they want to do it for the lowest cost possible.
With DVDs, it cost the same to send A or B or Z, and they made more money if you rented more or got a more expensive subscription that let you get more. So, they were highly incentivized to have a huge catalog and send you stuff you actually wanted.
With streaming, they want to push certain content based on what they're paid by their content partners, or what SEO tells them you will accept, and they want to do it for the lowest cost possible.
> Spotify is missing that certain ingredient that local radios (before they were sold and cannibalized by Clear Channel/iHeartMedia) and early 1980s MTV really nailed.
This is interesting to me, as someone who's played with Spotify and Tidal but mostly stuck with Apple Music. In part I think this is inertia -- if you stick with any of these streaming services for more than, say, half a year, then it's probably not worth switching unless there's a really compelling reason -- but all three of the services have both human-curated playlists and algorithmically generated ones, and it seems to me that Apple Music has the best curated playlists of any of those three. Spotify has the best algorithmically generated playlists of all three, but I find the best discovery trick for me is to let Apple's algorithms recommend curated playlists. :)
(Tidal, at least when I was last a regular user, was genuinely bad at algorithmically generated playlists and pretty mediocre with their curated ones. I'm not really sure what their unique strengths are beyond being willing to deeply integrate with virtually everyone and offering streams with MQA, which is basically a lossy hi-res format.)
This is interesting to me, as someone who's played with Spotify and Tidal but mostly stuck with Apple Music. In part I think this is inertia -- if you stick with any of these streaming services for more than, say, half a year, then it's probably not worth switching unless there's a really compelling reason -- but all three of the services have both human-curated playlists and algorithmically generated ones, and it seems to me that Apple Music has the best curated playlists of any of those three. Spotify has the best algorithmically generated playlists of all three, but I find the best discovery trick for me is to let Apple's algorithms recommend curated playlists. :)
(Tidal, at least when I was last a regular user, was genuinely bad at algorithmically generated playlists and pretty mediocre with their curated ones. I'm not really sure what their unique strengths are beyond being willing to deeply integrate with virtually everyone and offering streams with MQA, which is basically a lossy hi-res format.)
> I rarely conduct a Google search without appending "reddit" to the query.
Same here. I added a custom search keyword to chrome that automatically puts site:reddit.com after the %s.
Same here. I added a custom search keyword to chrome that automatically puts site:reddit.com after the %s.
Since you mentioned Spotify, I would like to plug my favorite music site and app, Hype Machine (hypem.com) which combines the simplicity of RSS and a curation of blogs to make a great discovery engine (once you found the right blogs to follow)
It’s a bit of the best of both worlds, aggregation and app features like a solid tech company, and human magic that feels like local music store rather than top 20 radio stations
It’s a bit of the best of both worlds, aggregation and app features like a solid tech company, and human magic that feels like local music store rather than top 20 radio stations
Total opposite Spotify experience - their "Discover Weekly" playlist has turned me on to so much cool music I don't think I would have found elsewhere. I don't like a lot of what they do (why would I listen to podcasts there?!) but that playlist is what keeps my subscription. Added bonus is that friends share _their_ discovery playlists with me and I get to hear a different curation based on their different musical tastes.
As someone who only reads technical books I enjoy the Amazon bookstore but primarily for books for my kids. Barnes and Noble's kids book section can be overwhelming. The Amazon Bookstore is smaller in scope and I can quickly grab a few popular books to filter through. For the same reason I like buying kids books directly from scholastic books website. They're pre-filtered for popular books at the right age/reading level.
I used to read a helluvalot more than I do now. After coding and looking at text all day, I'm ready to not look at text any more at the end of the day. I've tried keeping a book on the nightstand to read for a bit before going to sleep, but I've really just gotten out of the habit entirely now. That's kind of sad thinking about it enough to type it out.
In the 90s, I credit a huge amount of my love and appreciation for electronica to the folks at my nearby Tower Records. That single store, with a single listening station in the Electronic Music section, holding only 6 CDs, exposed me to music I never would have heard before. It wasn’t anything from the Billboard 100 or top streams on Spotify, it was just what some local electronic music nerds thought was new and cool and I am forever grateful to them for what they decided to share, as well as desperately mournful that I’ll never have that kind of experience again.
If you're a fan of Tower Records, check out this great documentary: "All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records".
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/all_things_must_pass_the_ri...
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/all_things_must_pass_the_ri...
In the 90s, the local community radio (Dallas' KNON) had a show on Thursday evenings. I can't remember the name of the show, but I'm pretty sure the DJ's name was Marty something. He would always sign off with "remember kids, fly low and avoid the radar". I would record his sets and play them back later at house parties. Later came Edge Club on KDGE that aired from midnight to like 4am or something. I lived out in the boonies, so a trip to Tower Records was very rare for me, but I never left without a stack of CDs. It wasn't until college that I started collecting and spinning vinyl.
There's a joke: "Escape room idea: Just a well-stocked bookstore with clearly marked exits. You have one hour to get out. Good luck."
Elliott Bay Books exemplifies that meme better than almost any place in the world. Not only does it do an almost preternatural job of putting books you might like in front of your face, but it's a literal warren that can be tricky to escape from after you've finally woken from your book-induced reverie.
Elliott Bay Books exemplifies that meme better than almost any place in the world. Not only does it do an almost preternatural job of putting books you might like in front of your face, but it's a literal warren that can be tricky to escape from after you've finally woken from your book-induced reverie.
I absolutely loved the University Village Amazon bookstore. I've got a big list of reasons why. First of all, there was no need to absolutely pack the books. Each book was displayed cover out, with some space around it, with maybe an endorsement or a bit of a review under it. It made it easy to discover interesting stuff simply by looking around. As a sci fi nerd, I'm used to the sci fi section being a bunch of paperbacks squished together floor to ceiling with just a vague title and an author name facing me. This was a huge step up. I found more than one new book there, and knowing that I'd get the Amazon price for it when I checked out made purchasing it and walking out an easy call (unlike at another bookstore, where for a new release I would've had to choose between getting it today or getting it 30% off the "list price" on Amazon).
That said, the whole reason this works as a store design is that the store has no particular motivation to have a big back catalog. If they don't have it, you're just gonna go get it on Amazon, so they haven't lost a sale anyway.
The store did get worse over time, though. More and more of the floor space became focused on selling a bunch of stuff that worked with Alexa. Stop it. You're not an Apple Store. Just be a book store. And as much as the book selection was pretty great to me the first few times I went in, when I stopped in a year later and the book selections were mostly the same, it was a lot less great.
That said, the whole reason this works as a store design is that the store has no particular motivation to have a big back catalog. If they don't have it, you're just gonna go get it on Amazon, so they haven't lost a sale anyway.
The store did get worse over time, though. More and more of the floor space became focused on selling a bunch of stuff that worked with Alexa. Stop it. You're not an Apple Store. Just be a book store. And as much as the book selection was pretty great to me the first few times I went in, when I stopped in a year later and the book selections were mostly the same, it was a lot less great.
yes, I'll +1 this. The Amazon Bookstore at U Village is (was?) great. Super helpful staff, roomy, good curations/recommendations, and way way cheaper than independent bookstores. I'll miss it
[deleted]
The annoying thing is that this is basically all replicable online, except Amazon has apparently never even tried.
Like, say I'm interested in 14th-15th century European history, maybe I have a couple good books already that I know. You could go to a university library and look them up on the shelves, and find a wealth of related books near them. Amazon won't even give you that level of browsing by library classification, using data which already exists. They have the same half-assed recommendation system which seems to have barely changed in the past 15-20 years.
Like, say I'm interested in 14th-15th century European history, maybe I have a couple good books already that I know. You could go to a university library and look them up on the shelves, and find a wealth of related books near them. Amazon won't even give you that level of browsing by library classification, using data which already exists. They have the same half-assed recommendation system which seems to have barely changed in the past 15-20 years.
Amazon used to do a lot in that space, they had a big focus on customers creating and sharing lists of products. Your list was almost a blog post where you could write descriptions of each item and why they were there, order them, etc. I remember in the mid-2000s these lists were some of the best ways to find good books and products--there were always great "here's a roundup of the best technical books for programming language X/Y/Z" lists that I would seek out for example.
It looks like there's much less focus on Amazon lists these days. Maybe they got rid of it entirely--it's hard to tell, all I can find are wish lists and such now.
It looks like there's much less focus on Amazon lists these days. Maybe they got rid of it entirely--it's hard to tell, all I can find are wish lists and such now.
When I visited Amazon's book stores they always had little end caps with curated selections of books. Employee picks, celebrities like Michelle Obama or Oprah Winfrey reading lists, etc. I agree independent stores have a lot more character but Amazon's store wasn't just a cold, sterile pile of books that an algorithm picked.
This is partly what's driven me to second hand/charity bookshops.
No, they don't have exactly the book I've been looking for. But occasionally they have absolute gems that I'd never have found independently.
No, they don't have exactly the book I've been looking for. But occasionally they have absolute gems that I'd never have found independently.
I wonder if this is why I've never found much joy in browsing at chain bookstores (Indigo, in Canada). It's all just bestsellers, and half the products aren't even books, they're like kitchy home-decor items, candles, blankets, cozy "reading" pajamas and whatnot. I guess it's lures intended to stimulate impulse purchases out of people who already know they're not going to read anything they buy anyway.
Whereas you go to the indie store and there's an entire shelf in the back dedicated to heraldry, seemingly for no other reason than that it's an area of acute personal interest for the proprietor.
Whereas you go to the indie store and there's an entire shelf in the back dedicated to heraldry, seemingly for no other reason than that it's an area of acute personal interest for the proprietor.
Chapters was great when they first opened, with a massive selection of books on many topics. Even without much in the way of curation, the selection alone made it possible to go a bit nuts with purchases.
Over time, their selection became poorer and poorer. Say, the "computer science" section of old, eventually lost anything like a text book, and became a few shelves of certification guides and "X for Dummies" books. Getting bought by Indigo only brought the coup de grace, when half of _those_ books were now replaced with candles and kitsch.
Over time, their selection became poorer and poorer. Say, the "computer science" section of old, eventually lost anything like a text book, and became a few shelves of certification guides and "X for Dummies" books. Getting bought by Indigo only brought the coup de grace, when half of _those_ books were now replaced with candles and kitsch.
I just can't get over the fact that there are so few actual books at Indigo now, that the mock living room sitting area set up in the middle of the store has billboard walls around it printed with murals depicting bookshelves.
Oh, oh no. That's just gross.
I don't live close to an Indigo store now, and usually don't bother to enter the nearest when I am around. I'll have to go and look for this cringe now though.
The best independent bookstore I know of are the thrift stores. I find all kinds of unusual books there, and best of all, they're dirt cheap so if they don't work out, I just donate them back :-)
[deleted]
You are spot on, and it is such great fun to browse a book store, it sounds amazon sterilized it which is probably a rare misread on what target customers wanted.
The Amazon store has local books on display, especially in the kids section (eg one on the space needle). It isn’t as good as the Barnes and Noble that used to be in the same shopping center, but to be honest the nicest thing about those were the cafes.
I actually burned myself out on books a long time ago. Very few deliver what they seem to offer on the shelf or website. Papers (individual publications curated via peer review) offer more for technical topics, and there is a lot of fiction online that is way more enticing (and…those that don’t work can be dropped after a few pages without being any poorer).
I actually burned myself out on books a long time ago. Very few deliver what they seem to offer on the shelf or website. Papers (individual publications curated via peer review) offer more for technical topics, and there is a lot of fiction online that is way more enticing (and…those that don’t work can be dropped after a few pages without being any poorer).
I feel like in the future, or maybe even now, there will be an opportunity to have something like a super nice, independent book store, but with the value proposition being more about the experience. Since people can always actually buy the book online, brick and mortar stores should shift to something that can't be replicated online. This would be particularly attractive for people who live in a city, where they may want somewhere warm and aesthetically pleasing to hang out, that's semi-social.
I think coffee shops demonstrate this in a way, but they don't go far enough, compared to what I'm thinking of. I imagine somewhere that has comfortable places to sit, read, and even some food, but primarily what you're paying for would be like a monthly membership.
When I travel, for example, I prefer now to stay in hostels over airbnb's, just because I like having an easy way to hangout and meet other people. I can still be online and do work, but at certain hours there's also more social activity and I appreciate both aspects.
I think coffee shops demonstrate this in a way, but they don't go far enough, compared to what I'm thinking of. I imagine somewhere that has comfortable places to sit, read, and even some food, but primarily what you're paying for would be like a monthly membership.
When I travel, for example, I prefer now to stay in hostels over airbnb's, just because I like having an easy way to hangout and meet other people. I can still be online and do work, but at certain hours there's also more social activity and I appreciate both aspects.
I think we're beginning to understand that algorithms suck at making the kinds of judgements that make human interactions interesting and worthwhile.
More of everything is not necessarily better. More of everything filtered algorithmically can be actively worse - not just because of poor modelling and information loss, but because the goals of the algorithm (typically related to some combination of hard sell and addiction) are diametrically opposed to a good human experience.
There is such a thing as culture, and algos are incredibly toxic to it.
Incidentally your semi-social idea is exactly what "clubs" provide in the UK.
Not many people know about clubs, which is strange, because they're incredibly influential on politics and culture.
They're subscription-only spaces for mostly upper middle class people in an expensive building - most in central London, a few scattered around other big cities - that offer food, social contact, and networking opportunities.
Most have curated selective membership. You have to be invited and approved before you can join.
They're also split by profession - politicians, lawyers, media personalities, musicians, journalists, creatives, and so on.
There used to be one for London startups. (Possibly still is - I haven't checked recently.)
More of everything is not necessarily better. More of everything filtered algorithmically can be actively worse - not just because of poor modelling and information loss, but because the goals of the algorithm (typically related to some combination of hard sell and addiction) are diametrically opposed to a good human experience.
There is such a thing as culture, and algos are incredibly toxic to it.
Incidentally your semi-social idea is exactly what "clubs" provide in the UK.
Not many people know about clubs, which is strange, because they're incredibly influential on politics and culture.
They're subscription-only spaces for mostly upper middle class people in an expensive building - most in central London, a few scattered around other big cities - that offer food, social contact, and networking opportunities.
Most have curated selective membership. You have to be invited and approved before you can join.
They're also split by profession - politicians, lawyers, media personalities, musicians, journalists, creatives, and so on.
There used to be one for London startups. (Possibly still is - I haven't checked recently.)
Yeah I hear/feel you on basically everything you said. Still, I just want a nice, comfortable place that I can go hang out for long parts of that day. I don’t care about it being exclusive and I would prefer it not to be.
When I was growing up book stores were kind of that place, but most of that has gone away.
When I was growing up book stores were kind of that place, but most of that has gone away.
They helped me realize that what I value about going to a good independent bookstore is curation. Not "highest rated" or "most popular" - but books I wouldn't get otherwise exposed to that an employee has selected to carry, and display.
This is something I am bothered by: if top ten lists are based on what people buy, and what people buy is based on top ten lists, where does humanity enter into the picture?
In the future we will have advanced AI like GPT-3 trained on the internet, generating content for the internet at far larger scales than humans, with that content being consumed to train the next generation of AI, like a snake eating its own tail and pushing human content into irrelevance. I feel like there’s the potential here for a dystopian novel where future humans are desperately trying to connect with another human in a giant maze of algorithmically generated conversations served up by AI bots through the metaverse.
This is something I am bothered by: if top ten lists are based on what people buy, and what people buy is based on top ten lists, where does humanity enter into the picture?
In the future we will have advanced AI like GPT-3 trained on the internet, generating content for the internet at far larger scales than humans, with that content being consumed to train the next generation of AI, like a snake eating its own tail and pushing human content into irrelevance. I feel like there’s the potential here for a dystopian novel where future humans are desperately trying to connect with another human in a giant maze of algorithmically generated conversations served up by AI bots through the metaverse.
A long time ago, I was a dev in Amazon's fulfillment org, and one day a lot of very smart people disappeared. The guy who had done some incredible pioneering work in computer vision for the warehouses; the only principal engineer the org had at the time; and a bunch of other people I know that we're just really clever people. And they joined an org called "JIHM". What's JIHM? They'll only tell you if you join. But it's going to be really cool. (I was in Toronto so I couldn't join- Seattle only).
What I knew: these particular people had left for this project. The head of it was the guy who had lead the Kindle project- he had rejoined Amazon allegedly because Jeff asked him to lead this project. And for whatever reason, this JIHM org had all these new physical book store managers reporting up to them.
Over lunch one day, I proposed a theory to my coworker: "they're going to make that IBM commercial from the 90s, where the sketchy dude grabs a bunch of stuff and puts it in his pockets, then just walks out the door and gets a receipt". It was a fun idea, and given the CV people they had pulled it may have even made sense. "What about the book stores?" My friend asked "It's a smoke screen. That same guy leading JIHM is legendary for leaking false reports that Amazon was going to build a PC to cover him hiring hardware engineer for the Kindle."
6 months later, Amazon Go with it's 'Just Walk Out' technology was publicly announced. The CV guy I knew was even in the commercial ("Holy shit, is that Danny?!").
Maybe this is the final conclusion that those stores were just a cover.
(Caveat: this is all wild speculation, rumours, and probably bad memory on my part, but it's a great story and I swear it's all true!)
What I knew: these particular people had left for this project. The head of it was the guy who had lead the Kindle project- he had rejoined Amazon allegedly because Jeff asked him to lead this project. And for whatever reason, this JIHM org had all these new physical book store managers reporting up to them.
Over lunch one day, I proposed a theory to my coworker: "they're going to make that IBM commercial from the 90s, where the sketchy dude grabs a bunch of stuff and puts it in his pockets, then just walks out the door and gets a receipt". It was a fun idea, and given the CV people they had pulled it may have even made sense. "What about the book stores?" My friend asked "It's a smoke screen. That same guy leading JIHM is legendary for leaking false reports that Amazon was going to build a PC to cover him hiring hardware engineer for the Kindle."
6 months later, Amazon Go with it's 'Just Walk Out' technology was publicly announced. The CV guy I knew was even in the commercial ("Holy shit, is that Danny?!").
Maybe this is the final conclusion that those stores were just a cover.
(Caveat: this is all wild speculation, rumours, and probably bad memory on my part, but it's a great story and I swear it's all true!)
Is Amazon Go stores sticking around? It is confusing when they say "all physical stores" are closing, but even the Amazon Go ones?
Amazon Go is being absorbed/rebranded under Amazon Fresh, which is supposedly like Whole Foods lite/their delivery service.
Might be wrong, this is just my observation in SEA/what I recall.
Might be wrong, this is just my observation in SEA/what I recall.
I was an intern at Amazon in Seattle in 2008 and was ordering groceries and beer from Fresh. It looks like it's a pretty big deal now in most major US cities, but I remember being surprised that year after year after year it seemed to just.... continue existing. Not going huge, but also not getting canned.
On the other hand, maybe that's the real lesson of Grocery Gateway and "dot coms" who tried to do a hard burn on this back in the day— it's a really hard thing to get right, and getting it right requires an extremely long horizon of slow and steady growth.
On the other hand, maybe that's the real lesson of Grocery Gateway and "dot coms" who tried to do a hard burn on this back in the day— it's a really hard thing to get right, and getting it right requires an extremely long horizon of slow and steady growth.
For a long time, Fresh did not directly make a profit. That wasn't it's purpose.
The goal of Amazon fresh was to say "hey UPS! Looks like we can do deliveries all by ourselves without you! Give us a better deal or we'll become your competitor". Because all those deliveries were on Amazon trucks.
Then one day Amazon's delivery needs scaled beyond what UPS was willing to take on. And so Amazon Logistics became a major thing.
The goal of Amazon fresh was to say "hey UPS! Looks like we can do deliveries all by ourselves without you! Give us a better deal or we'll become your competitor". Because all those deliveries were on Amazon trucks.
Then one day Amazon's delivery needs scaled beyond what UPS was willing to take on. And so Amazon Logistics became a major thing.
Amazon logistics actually started first in India because India was an unorganized section and there was no other company that can support Amazon. Almost every startup in India had to make their own logistic network.
> Amazon Go is being absorbed
Resistance is futile.
Resistance is futile.
The local Whole Foods closed years ago due to a rat infestation and a lease dispute. They just reopened as the first "just walk out" Whole Foods. I imagine a lot of the Amazon Go energy will be going into more of the existing Whole Foods stores. If I worked at Whole foods right now, I'd be updating my resume for the day the robots come.
Looks like they might go away as Amazon merges the technology into Whole Foods:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/technology/whole-foods-am...
(Sorry for paywalled article)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/technology/whole-foods-am...
(Sorry for paywalled article)
[deleted]
I hope so. It's honestly the coolest tech I've experienced in a while. It's invisible but a great UX.
From what I've read, today it's so expensive in terms of hardware that it's probably a money pit. But hardware gets cheaper, software gets more efficient, and eventually this stuff will just be in every store.
From what I've read, today it's so expensive in terms of hardware that it's probably a money pit. But hardware gets cheaper, software gets more efficient, and eventually this stuff will just be in every store.
They're bringing the amazon go tech to Whole Foods. Just started rolling out this week, I've got a feeling the timing here is not coincidental.
Thanks for sharing. Any inclination on what JIHM actually stood/stands for?
JIHM is JIHM's interesting hidden meaning.
(not true)
(not true)
A combination of the closing stores' code names (neither relate to the actual projects very much).
The "IHM" is reported as "inventory health management," but I'm not sure about the "J." Bloomberg reported it as being an intentionally boring acronym/expansion.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-07-18/amazon-s-...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-07-18/amazon-s-...
Jeff's Inventory Health Management?
Not sure what the J was for. Internally it’s been IHM since I joined. “Inventory Health Management” is a backronym. I won’t spill the - albeit boring - beans on where IHM actually comes from.
Yeah it does have the backronym flavor to it so that tracks.
I still have no idea.
That's an interesting story, thanks for sharing. It strikes me that when Amazon decides to commit to a product, they rarely fail. They've had success in innovating with Alexa, AWS, Kindle, etc. So hopefully they will have similar success with this tech, and hopefully it will be sold to third parties. I think the post-checkout future sounds awesome and convenient, and I look forward to it.
Why would they buy whole foods if they're just going to sell their competitive advantage to their competitors?
Why would they invest in such great infrastructure for amazon.com if they're just going to sell that infrastructure to competitors?
Because they make more money selling ads than they do selling their own products? Can't sell the ads unless merchants are using the marketplace though. Whole foods isn't necessary to sell the camera tech to competitors.
Is that even true though? I thought they frequently copied merchants’ products as Amazon Basics if they were selling well? Because if that’s true, it means they’d rather have the business themselves than advertise for someone else (at least in some categories).
Or they incentivize/empower teams to find revenue without an overarching strategy, and then periodically rationalize what they have.
The post checkout future is delivery from robotic warehouses with ordering systems that predicts your weekly shop. I have hardly been to a grocery store for years, and some weeks I don't bother logging in to adjust my order.
Isn't this kind of risky though? Do you ever get bad produce or damaged goods?
If I get anything bad they refund it no questions asked, but it's exceedingly rare. In ~4-5 years of weekly deliveries the worst damage I've had have been a couple of incidents of things like yoghurt pots etc. with thin film tops that have accidentally gotten pierced. I think if I ordered lots of produce I might consider doing that via one of the specialist delivery options, but it's never been a problem for me.
The biggest "risk" for my use has been that Ocado's predictive pre-filling of my weekly order is just good enough that I've gotten complacent about checking the orders, but it's not quite perfect, so if I miss the deadline, I might occasionally get stuff I didn't need (this is optional functionality - you can just place orders when you need them too and you can tweak what is included to have more control).
Ocado, the company in question is licensing various parts of their tech stack. E.g. in the US they've licensed to Kroger (which also took a 5% stake): https://www.businessinsider.com/ocado-kroger-amazon-online-g...
Between that, and the option of (more expensive) rapid deliveries from takeaway delivery companies like Deliveroo, or from the multiple different 15-minute grocery delivery companies, grocery stores just seems like a nuisance to me at this point. Of course my judgement is influenced by the fact that I don't have a car so not needing to drag shopping on foot or bus makes the leap in convenience far more significant than for a lot of people.
The biggest "risk" for my use has been that Ocado's predictive pre-filling of my weekly order is just good enough that I've gotten complacent about checking the orders, but it's not quite perfect, so if I miss the deadline, I might occasionally get stuff I didn't need (this is optional functionality - you can just place orders when you need them too and you can tweak what is included to have more control).
Ocado, the company in question is licensing various parts of their tech stack. E.g. in the US they've licensed to Kroger (which also took a 5% stake): https://www.businessinsider.com/ocado-kroger-amazon-online-g...
Between that, and the option of (more expensive) rapid deliveries from takeaway delivery companies like Deliveroo, or from the multiple different 15-minute grocery delivery companies, grocery stores just seems like a nuisance to me at this point. Of course my judgement is influenced by the fact that I don't have a car so not needing to drag shopping on foot or bus makes the leap in convenience far more significant than for a lot of people.
I had a very similar experience there. A mysterious 4 letter acronym that made no sense even if you knew what it stood for. "Multi-billion dollar market!". Wouldn't tell me what it was until I joined. Above average team from internal transfers ("our hiring standards are way above Amazon's regular bar!") and external hires. I even got smugly booted from a team meeting where I had presented some code I had written, after some SDE 2 realized I hadn't yet signed the NDA or whatever.
It ended up being Kindle ads for Amazon Local, the now defunct Groupon clone. So anti-climactic after all the cloak and daggers theatrics. At least Amazon Go is a much bigger deal with interesting tech behind it.
It ended up being Kindle ads for Amazon Local, the now defunct Groupon clone. So anti-climactic after all the cloak and daggers theatrics. At least Amazon Go is a much bigger deal with interesting tech behind it.
This is like when young Google bragged their receptionists had PhDs.
I was under NDA for that stupid robot that was announced recently. Had to bite my tongue for 3 years until I could tell people about that silly secret project.
I actually liked the 4 star store when I visited. Because it stocked items that were highly reviewed it had the peculiar quality of being a showcase for tons of well-rated knock-off items. Like I saw no-name camping and kitchen gear that I had always wanted to get a close up look at to understand the quality and if it was worth the low price. These items were placed right next to bigger name brand stuff too which I'm sure infuriated their marketing and sales teams.
So it might have been a doomed concept from the start, but I'll miss having a physical showcase for cheap knock-off and import goods.
So it might have been a doomed concept from the start, but I'll miss having a physical showcase for cheap knock-off and import goods.
Seems that having the brick and mortar shop exposes how cheap the crap on Amazon is. I never regret going to a store for anything remotely expensive where I'm unsure of the quality. Amazon will always hover around just good enough and just cheap enough.
I trust them for USB/HDMI/etc cables, but nothing else. But I’d rather order cables from Monoprice anyway.
Yeah, that actually sounds like a cool concept.
I found it weird they named it "4 star". I get that it's 4 stars and above rated items, but the name gives the impression of "mostly ok, but not perfect".
I wish Amazon would try different shopping experiences online, versus the hellscape of overoptimization that is Amazon.com.
Part of the appeal of a bookstore is to have a different shopping experience than what you get online or even at other physical stores. It's walking over to a section, picking up a book, seeing what resonates. It's 'browsing' in a slower, calmer form, closer to the reading experience itself.
Why doesn't Amazon try to make that? Replicate that experience in a new brand, call it 'booklovers.com' or something. Make it a cut down subset of features and information, with the book's content more at the center of the experience and easier to browse, along with the books 'next to' it. More curated, less metadata.
Being freed of physical world means we can have many very different experiences without dealing with the scarcity of real estate. Yet Amazon tries to standardize the shopping experience, to the detriment of many categories of products that deserve their own approach.
Part of the appeal of a bookstore is to have a different shopping experience than what you get online or even at other physical stores. It's walking over to a section, picking up a book, seeing what resonates. It's 'browsing' in a slower, calmer form, closer to the reading experience itself.
Why doesn't Amazon try to make that? Replicate that experience in a new brand, call it 'booklovers.com' or something. Make it a cut down subset of features and information, with the book's content more at the center of the experience and easier to browse, along with the books 'next to' it. More curated, less metadata.
Being freed of physical world means we can have many very different experiences without dealing with the scarcity of real estate. Yet Amazon tries to standardize the shopping experience, to the detriment of many categories of products that deserve their own approach.
I think abebooks.com is owned by Amazon - maybe they are trying something like that there.
Amazon also owns bookdepository.com (and goodreads.com)
There’s a massive opportunity to make VR shopping experiences. Just try Redfin VR and see how cool it is for shopping for houses. I want to shop for other big purchases that way.
Houses is an interesting one. It would massively improve the experience if they just took some more photos or used one of those products which builds a 3D scan of the property. But they seem to sell fast with 3 photos and an inaccurate floorplan so why bother I guess. Maybe we need to just cut out the agent and get home owners to list their own properties and build the scans with lidar on their phones.
It’s funny I just spoke to a colleague about this a few hours ago. Anker.com is basically an Amazon storefront without the shitscape.
Amazon makes so much money from bullshit at retail that they cannot enable basic features that even not so great physical retailers get right. Case in point: try buying windshield wipers for multiple cars. You’ll get ads for incompatible blades and tricked into a subscription. It’s literally worse than the 1980 experience of flipping through a torn, filthy book hanging from a shelf by a string.
Amazon makes so much money from bullshit at retail that they cannot enable basic features that even not so great physical retailers get right. Case in point: try buying windshield wipers for multiple cars. You’ll get ads for incompatible blades and tricked into a subscription. It’s literally worse than the 1980 experience of flipping through a torn, filthy book hanging from a shelf by a string.
Amazon uses AI to make highly optimised storefronts.
Why don't they also use AI to make highly pleasing storefronts and target other markets?
Amazon is the everything store, but it presents like a big box store. Why not build mini Boutique stores or more of an IKEA experience?
Why don't they also use AI to make highly pleasing storefronts and target other markets?
Amazon is the everything store, but it presents like a big box store. Why not build mini Boutique stores or more of an IKEA experience?
AutoZone stores still have the book hanging by a string in their physical stores. And it's faster to search and find the right blades, too.
Exactly! It’s bizarre that it’s faster and more reliable to go to Autozone.
Another funny one is lightbulbs - good luck unless you are looking for a particular part number.
Another funny one is lightbulbs - good luck unless you are looking for a particular part number.
Steam tried this with their curators feature. You can subscribe to ordinary users and see their personal recommendations/reviews. Not idea how well this feature is used but personally I found the general AI recommendations to be better and most of the curators to over blow everything and call a game literally unplayable because they could only get 59fps on one scene.
That curators feature was buried way too deep into the interface.
What OP is proposing is the vision to divorce the URL from the warehouses. Allow some teams within Amazon to make websites to buy books or other stuff from bespoke URLs. I think at the scale that Amazon has, it would only help.
What OP is proposing is the vision to divorce the URL from the warehouses. Allow some teams within Amazon to make websites to buy books or other stuff from bespoke URLs. I think at the scale that Amazon has, it would only help.
I am working on this :)! Shepherd.com, only 10 months old but i have a lot more formats planned as we get further along!
I use NLP on the backend to tie books to Wikipedia topics and working to improve that and bring in genre filters/pages soon.
Let me know what you think ([email protected])
I use NLP on the backend to tie books to Wikipedia topics and working to improve that and bring in genre filters/pages soon.
Let me know what you think ([email protected])
This is a fantastic idea. All the benefits of Amazon (fullfilment, prime shipping) but with a better user experience.
Now that I think of it.. they do experiment with things like this. For example, near the top of my Amazon homepage right now, I see "Influencer fashion finds". Clicking in reveals some kind of modernized QVC social media livestream experience.
Further down on the homepage is a combination of what appears to be algorithmically curated shopping lists, and human curated lists.
It's all very messy and disorienting to navigate, but I guess they're.. trying?
Now that I think of it.. they do experiment with things like this. For example, near the top of my Amazon homepage right now, I see "Influencer fashion finds". Clicking in reveals some kind of modernized QVC social media livestream experience.
Further down on the homepage is a combination of what appears to be algorithmically curated shopping lists, and human curated lists.
It's all very messy and disorienting to navigate, but I guess they're.. trying?
It was a weird model. As close to a physical manifestation of the front page of Amazon.com as you can get, which doesn't really translate very well to the retail experience people are used to. Like, I have never in my life randomly gone to Amazon, browsed around their site, clicked through different categories, found something I liked and bought it. Their entire experience starts and ends at the search bar, and that's impossible to replicate in the physical world.
It will be interesting to see how their grocery and convenience stores fare. I have some Amazon Go stores nearby and they never seem too busy.
It will be interesting to see how their grocery and convenience stores fare. I have some Amazon Go stores nearby and they never seem too busy.
I get you, but this is not the experience they are trying to recreate, they are trying to recreate the very experience you said the website is lacking by using the algorithm and data from there online sales to decide what it should sell in the first place.
I can quite easily reproduce the Amazon search bar by walking into a local high street pound shop. Their search is incredibly poor, skewing strongly towards promoted, clone or amazon brands. It's rare that i can find what I'm looking for without getting creative.
Yeah but do you get “I see you have begun a collection of every pair of headphones ever made, would you like to add these three pairs to your cart to round out your purchase?”
Yeah, I never got how that was supposed to work, exactly. Like, if I just bought a TV, I'm probably not going to buy another one for a while, so, don't keep showing me all the TVs I didn't buy. At least show me stuff like sound bars, mounting hardware, TV stands, etc. Even with consumables, where it makes sense to show me literally the exact same thing I just bought, maybe wait a while until those things might have actually been, you know, consumed?
As always, I'm sure the explanation for why their search engine and recommendations are so bad is either that they don't think it would make them enough more money to be worth it to improve them. An even more sinister thought would be that they think it would make them less money to give consumers better recommendations. I'm not sure which it is, TBH.
As always, I'm sure the explanation for why their search engine and recommendations are so bad is either that they don't think it would make them enough more money to be worth it to improve them. An even more sinister thought would be that they think it would make them less money to give consumers better recommendations. I'm not sure which it is, TBH.
> Like, if I just bought a TV, I'm probably not going to buy another one for a while, so, don't keep showing me all the TVs I didn't buy.
Counterintuitively, you're wrong about this!
Some astronomical number of Amazon purchases are returned. Like 10 or 15%. So anyone who has just bought a TV is extremely likely (compared to the ambient) to be buying a TV right now.
It's algorithms all the way down.
Counterintuitively, you're wrong about this!
Some astronomical number of Amazon purchases are returned. Like 10 or 15%. So anyone who has just bought a TV is extremely likely (compared to the ambient) to be buying a TV right now.
It's algorithms all the way down.
I can sorta believe that, but...
If you're not returning the TV, this useless recommendation trains you to ignore the suggestions altogether. This must have some cost, but it's not one the algorithm can directly track, so it never gets priced into the recommendations.
If you're not returning the TV, this useless recommendation trains you to ignore the suggestions altogether. This must have some cost, but it's not one the algorithm can directly track, so it never gets priced into the recommendations.
I don't return items often. I frontload the research, if the purchase is significant or important.
But when I do consider returning an item due to dissatisfaction (not DOA or damage), I definitely research other options before initiating the return.
This much makes sense to me.
But when I do consider returning an item due to dissatisfaction (not DOA or damage), I definitely research other options before initiating the return.
This much makes sense to me.
Sure, but in that case, they also have information about whether I've returned the TV or not. If I haven't, it doesn't make nearly as much sense to keep recommending me TVs. Even if your ML algorithm thinks I'm going to return it, it still seems like you'd do better on a percentage basis to keep showing me sound bars, HDMI cables, and other accessories. After all, I bought a TV because I intended to buy a TV. That means I'm probably going to need some of those things to go with it, likely with far greater than 10-15% probability.
I suppose there's a possibility that your ML algorithm could decide that the profit from selling a TV so greatly exceeds that of the accessories that a 10-15% probability of preserving the sale in case of a return might be more worth it, but I don't really know the ins and outs of retail ecommerce to make a judgement there. It still just seems silly to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I suppose there's a possibility that your ML algorithm could decide that the profit from selling a TV so greatly exceeds that of the accessories that a 10-15% probability of preserving the sale in case of a return might be more worth it, but I don't really know the ins and outs of retail ecommerce to make a judgement there. It still just seems silly to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I agree, intuitively that makes much more sense. At a minimum, you should get some portion of accessories vs replacement items in your recommendations.
I'd be blown away with surprise to learn that AMZN hasn't optimized for revenue in the calculation though, so it seems likely that we're wrong.
Of course we'd prefer AMZN to optimize for customer happiness/benefit instead. To me, the "smart" approach would be to recommend accessories until and unless the customer shows some signal indicating that they are looking for another TV. Then switch to full replacement strategy (or even return-minimization strategy) mode.
That or similar logical approach may have been abandoned after getting better results (by some metric) from the ML-optimized approach. Assuming there's a human involved at all.
I'd be blown away with surprise to learn that AMZN hasn't optimized for revenue in the calculation though, so it seems likely that we're wrong.
Of course we'd prefer AMZN to optimize for customer happiness/benefit instead. To me, the "smart" approach would be to recommend accessories until and unless the customer shows some signal indicating that they are looking for another TV. Then switch to full replacement strategy (or even return-minimization strategy) mode.
That or similar logical approach may have been abandoned after getting better results (by some metric) from the ML-optimized approach. Assuming there's a human involved at all.
With how painless Amazon generally makes returns for regular customers, I could see it being a viable alternative to in-person browsing for one to buy several different brands of item and just return all but the least cheap-feeling one
I dread watching random videos on YouTube for the same reason. No, I have not suddenly kindled an ongoing interest in unclogging sinks! And I just wanted to see that one Billie Eilish song my kid mentioned…and no more!
This seems like the opposite for me... every time I've walked into an Amazon Books I've found at least one thing that I've wanted to buy
So much easier than hunting through a Barnes and Noble or doom-scrolling through online listings
So much easier than hunting through a Barnes and Noble or doom-scrolling through online listings
Argos in the U.K. replicates this pretty well
Just in case people have never seen this business, they've got a lot of stuff but it's all on racks accessible only to employees. For customers the experience is there are a lot of catalogs (these days electronic) listing everything they have, you pick what you want (now just touching it on the screen, but historically you write a number on a form) and then you go see a member of staff, they take your payment and meanwhile your items are fetched from the stores. The catalogs are also available to take home (and these days they're a web site).
The biggest difference to Amazon is after I pick that I want an HDMI cable, a garden trowel and a high temperature incandescent bulb for an oven, it says ready to pick up in 5 minutes and I can walk to the store (five minutes) and get it with no delivery surcharge. Also I could pay cash (but I don't).
Obviously if you live 2+ hours from an Argos, Amazon is starting to look more competitive, but in the UK who lives two hours from an Argos? I don't buy much from Amazon.
The biggest difference to Amazon is after I pick that I want an HDMI cable, a garden trowel and a high temperature incandescent bulb for an oven, it says ready to pick up in 5 minutes and I can walk to the store (five minutes) and get it with no delivery surcharge. Also I could pay cash (but I don't).
Obviously if you live 2+ hours from an Argos, Amazon is starting to look more competitive, but in the UK who lives two hours from an Argos? I don't buy much from Amazon.
Yeah I really like it. It’s like Amazon but faster and without all the counterfeit junk.
Assuming that "Amazon Go" is the mini store with no cashiers, I used to get lunch there sometimes before the pandemic. Worked well, was a good experience. The email receipt would tell you how many minutes and seconds you'd spent in the store; it was trivially easy to get in and out in less than 2 minutes without trying to rush at all.
before the pandemic, we used to gamify that at work -- who could go to the store, buy $x, and get out in the least amount of time!
definitely a gimmicky thing to put on the receipt, but I do miss these little "fun" things
definitely a gimmicky thing to put on the receipt, but I do miss these little "fun" things
> I have never in my life randomly gone to Amazon, browsed around their site, clicked through different categories, found something I liked and bought it.
Guilty as charged on consumerism front, but I do exactly this on black fridays.
Guilty as charged on consumerism front, but I do exactly this on black fridays.
I went to one of the "four star shops" around the winter holidays looking for gifts, but left empty handed. It felt like it was all the crap they wanted to push, almost like the store itself is an advertisement space. It was the first and last time I'd been, so personally I'm not surprised to hear these are closing.
Isn’t that what any store is? What the store wants to push (based on what they think people will want). If you didn’t see anything you wanted it may just be that you are not the target market. That is true of many stores. The more specialized the narrower the target market. The Amazon stores seemed to stock a lot of what a general bookstore would stock with a few novelty items like in a gift store thrown in.
Most big box retailers lease store space (by the sq ft) to OEMs now, instead of buying and distributing the goods themselves.
Much less liability for the retailer, and puts the onus for sales on the manufacturer. I would be surprised if Amazon didn't try to do that with their 4-star shops.
Much less liability for the retailer, and puts the onus for sales on the manufacturer. I would be surprised if Amazon didn't try to do that with their 4-star shops.
A store is proximity plus curation. Of all the 985 possible car stereos you could possibly buy they have 12 that will serve a variety of needs while filtering out useless inferior or poorly prices options rather than you having to evaluate the a much broader selection of options. It's likely that your interests and the stores are somewhat aligned. At the front end there is a bunch of overpriced candy, soda, and magazines. Therein your interests aren't aligned. All of it is terrible for you and terribly priced. The entire section is designed to manipulate and harm in a small fashion all the people it is dealing with hopefully fairly in the other section. Consider programming vs ads same difference.
A store that lacks any direction, curation, and empathy is more like the front end or ad space than the body of the store or programming. It is not that they are focused on what they want to sell you of course they are. It's that they have put less thought in what they would want to buy if they put themselves in your place. An algorithm is a shit way to stock a store.
A store that lacks any direction, curation, and empathy is more like the front end or ad space than the body of the store or programming. It is not that they are focused on what they want to sell you of course they are. It's that they have put less thought in what they would want to buy if they put themselves in your place. An algorithm is a shit way to stock a store.
Bummer! The bookstores are pretty nice, and the 4-star shops were so useful for the bizarre, algorithmically curated collection of product they contained. I remember pre-pandemic, I needed a ir thermometer and a gift wrapped coffee table book, randomly popped into my local 4-star (soho) and it had everything.
Off the bat, I can think of two reasons for this:
1. Even Amazon's own bricks-and-mortar stores find it impossible to compete against Amazon's online store.
Or:
2. The physical stores were just a "front" necessary for developing and testing new technology (as suggested by mabbo elsewhere on this page https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30533453).
My money is on #2.
1. Even Amazon's own bricks-and-mortar stores find it impossible to compete against Amazon's online store.
Or:
2. The physical stores were just a "front" necessary for developing and testing new technology (as suggested by mabbo elsewhere on this page https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30533453).
My money is on #2.
That's a shame, I liked their "covers out" model, and they often had a reasonably stocked tech book shelf, which is something indie bookstores never really do well.
> tech book shelf, which is something indie bookstores never really do well.
RIP the Powell's technical book store. It was a very large book store with only technical books. I spent many a happy hour poking around and finding interesting books.
RIP the Powell's technical book store. It was a very large book store with only technical books. I spent many a happy hour poking around and finding interesting books.
The top floor of Powell's now has a large technical section, but it's not quite a replacement.
I liked it too. The best bookstores are good for their curation and Amazon Books did a reasonable job at it.
University bookstores used to have some really great and obscure technical books. Not sure if they still do, but they were worth browsing, some you can’t do online. B&N and Border would occasionally have something interesting in their technical sections, but they increasingly got stuffed with dummy books and just people trying to milk a certain gravy train (never write those books).
I guess they got tired of closing other people's physical bookstores!
There were none left….
Huh. I didn't know Amazon had physical bookstores.
They had covers facing forwards, which made it incredibly exhausting to browse due to overstimulation.
The side effect of that is they had a much narrower selection than a typical bookstore of that size.
It was pretty weird.
It was pretty weird.
Yes, and they were quite fun to browse. They were laid out in a way that books next to each other would be "recommended" for each other. In that way, you would often find a group of books that were interesting to you.
As others said, it was covers out, which in my opinion only had the downside of having limited shelf space.
As others said, it was covers out, which in my opinion only had the downside of having limited shelf space.
Their design and layout (the "4-star" stores too) borrowed heavily from popular late 90s/2000s UK bookstore chain "Waterstones" IMO.
I've always found the physical similarity of Amazon's own retail store efforts to Waterstone's curious, as Amazon actually tried a partnership with Waterstones to sell Kindles and such years before opening their first stores back in 2012... First Amazon book store with remarkably similar design and layout to a Waterstones followed in 2015. As a UK expat living in the US my first thoughts on entering an Amazon Book store here was just how much it was like Waterstones.
Could just be coincidence!
> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/waterstones...
> https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/2/9661556/amazon-books-firs...
I've always found the physical similarity of Amazon's own retail store efforts to Waterstone's curious, as Amazon actually tried a partnership with Waterstones to sell Kindles and such years before opening their first stores back in 2012... First Amazon book store with remarkably similar design and layout to a Waterstones followed in 2015. As a UK expat living in the US my first thoughts on entering an Amazon Book store here was just how much it was like Waterstones.
Could just be coincidence!
> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/waterstones...
> https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/2/9661556/amazon-books-firs...
I wonder what the internal data showed on these stores - from what I remember, these stores mostly had kindle devices and some selection of books which you could more easily get online.
Someone probably realized that Amazon Go & Whole Foods were better for foot traffic (since they sell groceries & other items) and investing more into selling Amazon Go walk out tech would be a better expansion plan than their own stores.
Someone probably realized that Amazon Go & Whole Foods were better for foot traffic (since they sell groceries & other items) and investing more into selling Amazon Go walk out tech would be a better expansion plan than their own stores.
I don't think I ever saw one of their bookstores, but I do remember passing by one or two Amazon kiosks at a mall. All they really sold there were some Amazon hardware like Kindle, Kindle Fire, Alexa, or Fire TV boxes.
I didn't really see the point, given that some places like Wal-Mart or Best Buy already have display models you can play with.
I didn't really see the point, given that some places like Wal-Mart or Best Buy already have display models you can play with.
I wonder if Whole Foods will go. It seems they've been downsizing staff and accepting longer checkout lines. No more "N items or less" line, and the self-service checkout is still barcode-oriented, not Amazon Go technology. Meanwhile, I see huge numbers of Amazon vans driving around.
Amazon is rolling out the just walk out technology in whole foods stores. Only a couple have it now, but I imagine it won't be long until the rest do too.
How does just walk out work with produce?
The Amazon fresh near me has a buggy with a bunch of cameras and a scale on it. When you drop food items into it, it's automatically added and weighed. When you push the buggy to an exit line it checks for any errors then emails you a receipt.
If you're wondering how it detects the produce, produce in the US has tiny little stickers on it or at least a PLU code where its sitting. You enter that 4 digit code and it gets weighed.
If you're wondering how it detects the produce, produce in the US has tiny little stickers on it or at least a PLU code where its sitting. You enter that 4 digit code and it gets weighed.
There's physical Amazon Fresh stores in the Seattle area (at least) which has the just-walk-out technology. I tried the one in Factoria out and it was ... interesting. A lot of groceries were pre-packaged but it had most things that I was looking for.
Felt like a "scaled-up" convenience store. Not having a line was very nice.
Felt like a "scaled-up" convenience store. Not having a line was very nice.
Isn't that just the general trend with grocery stores in general (long lines)? I don't know about eliminating express lanes, but I don't know how many years it's been since I've been in a grocery store and seen most of the lanes being staffed, even at peak times. It seems like they'd rather run 2 lanes out of 8, plus the self checkout, rather than even temporarily open up a couple extra lanes to clear out long lines.
That's probably just due to normal staff retention issues that everywhere seems to be experiencing right now. There are still plenty of brand new Whole Foods popping up, plus the Amazon Go technology has just begun to become integrated as of just a few days ago.
I really liked the one in northern Chicago mostly because it had a nice coffee shop inside. But otherwise it seemed like a novelty and something I wouldn't use for actual shopping. Amazon Go on the other hand...
I used to frequent the Amazon Bookstore on Southport in the Lakeview neighborhood because and it was actually pretty good for new title discovery. I always ended up getting books from there. The location was great with lots of nice shops surrounding it.
The 4-star store out at Oakbrook Mall though — I didn’t find as interesting but I’m not in the demographic that shops for gifts for others. It was pretty busy though.
The 4-star store out at Oakbrook Mall though — I didn’t find as interesting but I’m not in the demographic that shops for gifts for others. It was pretty busy though.
Amazon will close its 4-star, pop up and bookstore locations on various dates and *notify customers via signage*.
Remember thinking at the time that it was odd, but makes way more sense now.
I'm no fan of Amazon, but I did walk through the 4-star shop in Mall of America while Christmas shopping last year, and I liked it. I thought it was a cool space, filled to the brim with various interesting oddities. There was a long line to get in (partially due to COVID reasons), but it seemed very popular.
That's a bummer, their 4-Star shops were my go-to for gifts during the holiday season.
I wonder how long they'll keep the Amazon Fresh brick-and-mortar experiment running.
I wonder how long they'll keep the Amazon Fresh brick-and-mortar experiment running.
The Amazon Go and Fresh stores are a lot more successful and they serve as distribution centers for Amazon Fresh online orders. It's unlikely they'll close them down
They were pretty great for that purpose. Somehow visiting a 4-star store was more efficient than staying home and perusing 10 different 'best-of' lists across kitchen, electronics, book or game categories. I always found something interesting when I visited.
It was a bit like a Sharper Image but instead of 80% of the items being useless gadgets it was more like 20%.
It was a bit like a Sharper Image but instead of 80% of the items being useless gadgets it was more like 20%.
That’s too bad. The 4star shop near me is actually pretty good.
The foot traffic seemed to be about people returning stuff and then converting to customers of random stuff.
The foot traffic seemed to be about people returning stuff and then converting to customers of random stuff.
Last weekend, I ordered a Nintendo Switch OLED from my apartment in NYC, and picked it up at the 4-Star store in SOHO less than 30 minutes later.
It was an awesome experience, and I'm sad that this might be the last time I get immediate service like that from Amazon.
It was an awesome experience, and I'm sad that this might be the last time I get immediate service like that from Amazon.
At first I was surprised that these stores had survived this long, and then I remembered these were probably great write-offs to have around when the real goal was probably data collection on how people navigated certain kinds of physical stores. Amazon is great at paying no tax because it has a lot of operations that on the surface lose a lot of money but whose real purpose is to funnel data into other, more successful projects. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the fate of Whole Foods in the long run.
That sucks for both the workers and the customers. I really enjoyed being able to go in and discover a book and then get a good discount based on my prime membership.
Never saw those in real life, but I don't get why a part of Amazon Retail is interested in having actual stores. Most (nearly all?) their customers use them because they can deliver 1-2 day shipping on a ton of items without having to go out to shop. Need some niche hydroponic nutrients, they have it. Need some precise book that your typical bookstore doesn't have, they have it.
I don't see why I'd want to go to an Amazon Shop instead of Wal-mart, Canadian Tire, Target, whatever else already exists. It's a market with razor-thin margins that's absolutely doesn't fit their current approach and growth focus.
I don't see why I'd want to go to an Amazon Shop instead of Wal-mart, Canadian Tire, Target, whatever else already exists. It's a market with razor-thin margins that's absolutely doesn't fit their current approach and growth focus.
I go to amazon.com to search for and buy a specific thing. The occasional time I'd stop by a 4 Star or Books store, it was to _browse_, and.. honestly, probably buy things I didn't need.
The name "4-star" still confuses me so much. It signals to me "mediocre - not quite 5-star".
I realize they meant it as "everything 4 stars and above", but . . .
I realize they meant it as "everything 4 stars and above", but . . .
Oooooohh... now I get it. I thought they were closing all but their best-performing stores.
It wouldn't have occurred to me to go into one of these stores to buy an actual book, but I will say I appreciated having a no-advanced-planning-needed way to get a $4 HDMI cable or rechargeable batteries, or whatever other things regular electronics stores usually mark way up because customers have no other choice. Maybe now that so much of this is available same-day for free from online-Amazon, that's less compelling?
Sounds like RadioShack.
RadioShack is one of my favorite examples of a company that just couldn't evolve. They could have been a leader in the online electronics doodads market. They already had distribution warehouses to stock the local stores. One could have been converted to a pick&pull warehouse easily (in my non-experienced logistics point of view). They couldn't even do cell phones well.
Ah well. I'm going to miss the 34th street bookstore.
The only good things about these stores was that you got to hold a kindle in your hands before deciding to buy one on amazon.com
[deleted]
This shouldn't be confused with the retail locations currently pushing to unionize
https://www.businessinsider.com/workers-first-union-push-at-...
https://www.businessinsider.com/workers-first-union-push-at-...
That's talking about the grocery stores, though, and the post is about the bookstores and 4-star stores.
I've purchased maybe one book from the brick & mortar store in Chicago, and it was one my kid just didn't want to give up.
Beyond that, I've only ever used them as a quick way to return an item to the warehouse.
Beyond that, I've only ever used them as a quick way to return an item to the warehouse.
It was weird to step in one and say “eh, I’ll just order it on Kindle later”.
I'm not exactly happy to hear this, but I'm also not at all surprised.
After reading through some of the comments here, apparently the thing that I went to was some kind of Amazon mall "kiosk", not a proper store. Whatever it was that I went to, it was just incredibly creepy. It was just a bunch of kindles and Alexa's crammed into this little area, with no one around, hidden away in a weird area of the mall.
I imagine it was supposed to have "go" associated to it in some way? There was no information I saw anywhere indicating how any of it was supposed to work. I didn't any sort of cash register or obvious spot where an employee would be. The whole thing was really just gross. It felt like, if you were to see a purse in the middle of the street with fists full of dollar bills sticking out of it with no one around. It's like someone put it there, specifically with the intention of them wanting you to take it. It's like it's accusing you.
It was this disgusting sensation of being monitored in a way that was outright nauseating. I can't really describe it. If you've ever gone to a gas station or some other place, and are trying to pay for something, and the cashier comes out 5 to 10 minutes later from the bathroom, it was kind of like that, but without the relief of seeing a human after a few minutes. Now picture that, but in a small square space without walls, or signs of life. It's like no one's been there in months. That's what that location felt like.
Anyway, if these Amazon stores were anything like that, I'm hardly surprised they didn't do so well. I'm not a huge fan of the idea of being treated like a criminal, just by entering a store.
The names sound like they could have used some serious rethinking, too. My first assumption after hearing the term Amazon "4-star" is that it's not supposed to be very good. 5 stars is good, so if it's only 4 it's low quality products only. Was it meant to be a "high end" dollar store? If so, why wouldn't I just go to the dollar store instead?
I'm sure they have their reasons, I'm not vain enough to think I'm smarter than the people who made these decisions, but I can't imagine why they bothered, or if in doing so, why they made such weird decisions.
After reading through some of the comments here, apparently the thing that I went to was some kind of Amazon mall "kiosk", not a proper store. Whatever it was that I went to, it was just incredibly creepy. It was just a bunch of kindles and Alexa's crammed into this little area, with no one around, hidden away in a weird area of the mall.
I imagine it was supposed to have "go" associated to it in some way? There was no information I saw anywhere indicating how any of it was supposed to work. I didn't any sort of cash register or obvious spot where an employee would be. The whole thing was really just gross. It felt like, if you were to see a purse in the middle of the street with fists full of dollar bills sticking out of it with no one around. It's like someone put it there, specifically with the intention of them wanting you to take it. It's like it's accusing you.
It was this disgusting sensation of being monitored in a way that was outright nauseating. I can't really describe it. If you've ever gone to a gas station or some other place, and are trying to pay for something, and the cashier comes out 5 to 10 minutes later from the bathroom, it was kind of like that, but without the relief of seeing a human after a few minutes. Now picture that, but in a small square space without walls, or signs of life. It's like no one's been there in months. That's what that location felt like.
Anyway, if these Amazon stores were anything like that, I'm hardly surprised they didn't do so well. I'm not a huge fan of the idea of being treated like a criminal, just by entering a store.
The names sound like they could have used some serious rethinking, too. My first assumption after hearing the term Amazon "4-star" is that it's not supposed to be very good. 5 stars is good, so if it's only 4 it's low quality products only. Was it meant to be a "high end" dollar store? If so, why wouldn't I just go to the dollar store instead?
I'm sure they have their reasons, I'm not vain enough to think I'm smarter than the people who made these decisions, but I can't imagine why they bothered, or if in doing so, why they made such weird decisions.
Both the bookstores and 4-star appeared cluttered- a mixture of all kinds of stuff. And ordered by popularity, not by kind.
We have an Amazon Hairdresser here in East London (Spitalfields). Don't think I've ever seen anyone in there.
Whoa. Here's more info https://blog.aboutamazon.co.uk/shopping-and-entertainment/in...
Seems like a way to show off the AR capabilities Amazon is working on. Secondarily, many haircare products are only sold in salons and this effort could eventually be a way around those restrictions.
Seems like a way to show off the AR capabilities Amazon is working on. Secondarily, many haircare products are only sold in salons and this effort could eventually be a way around those restrictions.
Ah, sucks. I really liked the 4-star store.
Have you guys tried your local public libraries? Most of them include perks to extra resources. It is pretty nice.
Don’t see any comments mentioning inflation, but I’d assume that wavering consumer participation is a factor.
Shame, I liked the 4-star in Westfield Topanga. Nice selection of stuff in a pretty small space.
Good. The one at Westfield was a shit show of nothing useful.
It's great that Amazon is reducing its carbon footprint. Closing down physical bookstores is a step in right direction to fight climate change.
The physical bookstore is great.
I'm glad, only because their bookstore didn't accept cash.
They were a convenient way to return incorrect products, though.
They were a convenient way to return incorrect products, though.
Yeah, being able to return products at physical locations like their stores and Kohl's without having to pay a shipping fee has been a godsend
A lot of stores and shops either don’t or are reluctant to accept cash right now. Partially due to people’s COVID contamination concerns and partially because change is still hard to get.
In the US where a lot of these stores were (Amazon usually starts its pilot programs near its headquarters), that was maybe true a year and a half ago, but now. Change is no longer hard to find, and the few stores that held on to never accepting cash have closed.
If someone is willing to pay with a card, especially if they're worried about COVID contamination, why would they go to a store for something they can buy at Amazon in the first place? The reports seems to pretty consistently say that surface contamination is a much less likely vector for spread than human proximity, and going to a store still involves human proximity.
If someone is willing to pay with a card, especially if they're worried about COVID contamination, why would they go to a store for something they can buy at Amazon in the first place? The reports seems to pretty consistently say that surface contamination is a much less likely vector for spread than human proximity, and going to a store still involves human proximity.
This is really amazing news
could this be the extinguish step of embrace, extend, extinguish?
I never understood these stores. Worth a visit if passing and have time to see what they have or if your looking for a present for someone and don’t know what to get. But I’ve never woken up and thought I need a four star product. The selection (particularly books) is too wide and shallow to be worth browsing.
I hated these places. The one I walked into was literally the opposite of the vibe of the kind of bookstore I like, whether it's independent or even a Barnes and Noble. It was a soulless operation, where they follow you around the store if you don't look rich and in a hurry to leave. Good riddance.
They helped me realize that what I value about going to a good independent bookstore is curation. Not "highest rated" or "most popular" - but books I wouldn't get otherwise exposed to that an employee has selected to carry, and display.
That and local-interest connections to the place the bookshop is located.
Amazon's bookstores looked very much like a good independent bookstore (well, if you take away all the Ring Doorbells and stuff), but lacked that essential ingredient. Everything was just based on some "best seller" list for a specific category.
If I already know what I want, Amazon is a really easy place to get it. If I'm casually browsing, both Amazon.com and Amazon's physical bookstores were really bad at helping me discover something new that I'm interested in.
I'm physically incapable of visiting a good independent bookstore without buying something. Often far too much of something. It's an expensive disorder I have. I think the last time I walked into Elliott Bay Books with no intention of buying anything, I walked out about $300 poorer.
I've probably stopped in to Amazon's bookstore at University Village in Seattle about a dozen times since it opened. I only ever bought something once. A charging cable.