Amazon has closed its ninth cashierless convenience store so far this year as it re-evaluates its physical-store strategy.
The Amazon Go store on Fifth Avenue in downtown Seattle closed its doors for the last time on June 16, Amazon confirmed to Insider. GeekWire first reported the story on Tuesday. The location opened in 2018 as the second-ever Amazon Go store.
Instead of waiting in a checkout line, Amazon Go customers can just walk out with their purchases, and cameras installed by Amazon track their purchases and debit their accounts.
Amazon said in March that it would permanently shutter eight Amazon Go stores as of April 1, including two in New York, two in Seattle, and all four locations in San Francisco. The two Seattle stores had been temporarily closed for months due to unspecified "safety concerns" from Amazon.
"We've closed our 5th and Marion Seattle Amazon Go location, and are working closely with employees to find new opportunities within Amazon, including at other nearby stores," Amazon spokesperson Jessica Martin told Insider. "We continue operating more than 20 Amazon Go stores across the U.S., and look forward to opening more in the future."
In March, an Amazon spokesperson told Insider that "we periodically assess our portfolio of stores and make optimization decisions along the way."
Amazon has spent the last year closing some of its experiments in brick-and-mortar retail.
Last year, it scrapped its Amazon Books, 4-Star, and Pop Up stores. In February, the company said it would close some Amazon Go stores and some supermarkets it had opened under the Amazon Fresh name. The company has also sought tenants to sublease some planned Amazon Fresh locations in the Midwest.
Over the same period, Amazon has opened Amazon Style, a clothing store. Whole Foods, the grocery chain that Amazon bought in 2017, is also planning to accelerate the pace of new store openings.
Here are the Go stores that Amazon has closed so far this year:
- New York: 110 Maiden Lane; 315 Park Ave South
- San Francisco: 3 Embarcadero Center; 300 California Street; 575 Market Street, Ste. 150; 98 Post Street
- Seattle: 300 Pine Street; 1423 Fourth Avenue; 920 Fifth Avenue
Do you work or shop at an Amazon Go store and have a story to share? Reach out to Alex Bitter at abitter@insider.com or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at (808) 854-4501.
