NEW YORK — Amazon is shutting down all its pop-up shops and focusing on opening more of its bookstores as it rethinks its brick-and-mortar strategy.
The online retail giant has 87 pop-up shops in malls, Whole Foods grocery stores and Kohl’s department stores that sell Amazon’s Echo voice-activated devices, Kindle tablets and other gadgets.
Amazon did not say when the pop-up shops would shut down, but the Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, reported that they will close down in April.
Amazon has been making a big push into brick-and-mortar stores, buying up the Whole Foods grocery chain and opening bookstores and cashier-less convenience stores around the country. But sales at its physical stores slipped 3 per cent in the last three months of 2018, compared with the same period the year before.
The Associated Press