Online shopping giant (and stealer of all our pennies) Amazon has today been slated to set up their very own real-life store in New York.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the store would ‘act as a mini-warehouse’ and as a place for customers to pick up same-day orders that they’ve placed online. In addition, they reckon it’ll sell Amazon products like Kindles, Fire smartphones and the Fire TV box. In short, it sounds like an amazing version of Argos.
Here’s a few questions we’re going to need answering almost immediately.
What the hell else are they going to sell?
Sure T_he Wall Street Journal_ probably made a good call on the store selling Amazon’s own products, but Kindles don’t take up that much space. Plus, who wants to go into a store with like, three products? What else will they choose from their 70,000,000 (probably) products they stock online? Is it just going to be books like they originally sold or will it be a weird and random collection of stuff featuring everything from questionable electrical products to non-specific fashion brands? Basically, it’s going to look like the eBay store that lady has in The 40 Year Old Virgin, isn’t it?
How are they going to do ‘recommended products’?
Pretty much half of the money we spend on Amazon comes from those products they helpfully suggest to you after they’ve analysed (read: pillaged) your browsing history. How’s that going to be done IRL? Will there be humans dressed in snazzy Amazon uniforms chasing you round the store shouting, ‘YOU LOOKED AT DRAUGHT EXCLUDERS ONLINE CAN I ALSO INTEREST YOU IN THIS SET OF THERMAL CURTAINS?’ before tackling you to the ground and beating you with a curtain pole until you submit and agree to purchase? Because that sounds kind of fun.
What’s it going to look like?
Of all the tech giants, Amazon isn’t the sleekest in design out there. Sure they make up for it in selling like, everything, but that pale orange and blue colour palette? Definitely not The One for us. Look at Apple, guys, they look very fancy. Amazon.co.uk looks a little bit like it belongs to Littlewoods. Does this mean you might be looking at a store that puts function over snazziness? Plus, what are they going to make the employees wear? Orange socks with blue baseball caps? Because we’ll take some of the socks right here right now, thanks. As long as they’re cosy.
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What about Amazon Marketplace?
We’re guessing what with the limited amount of space, Amazon Marketplace sellers aren’t even going to get a look in at the store. Which is a shame, since their goods are often cheaper (albeit with exorbitant shipping prices, the naughty little monkeys). Will they set up camp on the streets outside, hawking their wares from makeshift stalls to the highest bidder in an attempt to outprice the official store? Maybe there’ll be a stand-off between the two with the marketplace sellers using the blue baseball caps they’ve stolen from fallen store employees as catapults to launch their cut-price commodities at the brave employees who stayed behind to defend the store. Stay strong, guys. Stay strong.
Basically, this new Amazon Store will all probably make sense and be a very sensible business decision that will end up helping all of us lead a more efficient life, and we’ve gone and let our imaginations get away from us. Still, that was fun, wasn’t it?
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.