The e-commerce giant uses its headquarters city as a living laboratory, trying out new retail and logistics models.
SEATTLE — Tourists in Seattle have a new must-see destination: Amazon Go, the cashierless store the company opened near downtown in January.
People who are interested in what is coming next from Amazon, which makes about half of all online retail sales, just need to roam the city. Amazon uses Seattle as a living laboratory, trying out new retail and logistics models.
Some trials never leave the city. But others, like the use of independent contractors to deliver packages, have found their ways to the rest of the country and abroad. The pilots point to a company, with ambitions that at times can seem boundless, investing deeply in figuring out its physical footprint and how to provide convenience at a lower cost.
“Seattle is great for rolling out tests that haven’t been completely debugged,” said Jeff Shulman, a business professor at the University of Washington who hosts a podcast on the city’s culture. In 2015 when Amazon first tested the Treasure Truck, a decorated vehicle that drives around and sells a daily deal like smart watches or plant-based burger patties, it delayed the public debut at least twice before finally going live. The service has since expanded to more than two dozen cities.
As the grunge era in music showed more than two decades ago, “experimentation is embedded in Seattle’s DNA,” Professor Shulman said, so “you can get early feedback on how people use your product, and they will also be fairly forgiving on the hiccups.”
Amazon said it employed more than 45,000 people in the city, and its teams turn to them to test new products and services.
Here’s a tour of a few places where Amazon toys with new ideas in its backyard. Even after projects have expanded outside the city, the flagship locations remain a home for tweaks.
A second Amazon Go store opened in August, just a mile south of the original, this time in the heart of downtown. Like the original, it uses sensors and cameras to track what customers take off a shelf, so they don’t need to check out. But the store shows how Amazon may adapt the concept to different locations.
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