Amazon Opens First UK Bricks-And-Mortar Store

Amazon is bolstering its UK high street presence with the opening of its first non-food physical shop offering its bestselling lines of books, electronics, toys, games and homeware. The outlet, at the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, is the online retailer’s first Amazon 4-star store outside the US and will use data from its website sales to judge which products are proving popular with local shoppers. The shop also includes displays of products from small business sellers, which are sold through Amazon’s marketplace operation. The range of products sold in the store will change regularly, with Amazon staff responding to customer feedback and new product releases.  Amazon opened its first 4-star store in New York in 2018. The concept gets it name from the idea that all of the goods sold there have been rated at least four stars out of five by shoppers. The Bluewater store is Amazon’s latest venture into UK bricks-and-mortar retailing after a string of other recent trials, including a fashion pop-up shop, a till-less Amazon Fresh grocery store in west London, and even a hi-tech hair salon in the capital. Andy Jones, the Director of Amazon 4-star UK, said the company had been working on the UK outlet since before the coronavirus pandemic. “We are obviously just really keen now to get customers in and see what they think,” Jones said. “We’ve seen that the model has worked really well in malls in the US, so a location like Bluewater made total sense to us. There are the Amazon products they will expect but also local products from small suppliers because that is a huge part of the Amazon business.”