With Amazon opening its 4th book store one has to wonder why is it going against the wave it helped create and that brick & mortar retailers are frantically trying to catch-up of closing their stores and shifting their business on-line. Could it be now that Amazon has wrought almost absolute destruction on brick & mortars it is looking to fill specific voids. Or, if history is any indicator, then perhaps the stores are more of a Trojan Horse. Like its initial foray as an on-line bookstore Amazon has since expanded its product portfolio to include a vast array of items from cloud computing, publishing, mobile devices, content creation and oh yes..selling a wide variety of products on its web-site (not just books) could Amazon actually be looking at these stores as a springboard to launch other businesses (think fee-based wi-fi access, built-in cell towers to create a mobile carrier network, small-biz local cloud storage solutions..etc). Or it could be just one tremendous head-fake. Either way Amazon certainly will be in the heads of rival executives leaving them guessing as to..what..is..next.
http://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/news/2017/03/01/inside-amazons-first-brick-and-mortar-bookstore-in.html?ana=e_me_set1&s=newsletter&ed=2017-03-01&u=sAmE2YeVGI6C34B70ph%2FuJp4Bee&t=1488384350&j=77519081
Is this the end of eCommerce and the revival of brick & mortar? With Alibaba’s $2.88 billion purchase of a stake in a top Walmart competitor in the Chinese market one would not be faulted for answering that question affirmatively but this is probably moreso that latest stage of the Imperial Army slowly mowing down the last of the Rebels. Sure companies like Amazon and eBay are never going to forsake their digital platforms but they have wrecked enough carnage in the brick & mortar world to now have a wide enough birth to start becoming omni-channel players. What does this mean for the surviving brick & mortar companies? Be afraid. Be very afraid. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alibaba-spending-2-9-billion-111959145.html
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