Report: Amazon Plans to Open 6 More Amazon Go Storefronts This Year

Amazon.com is reportedly planning to open as many as six more Amazon Go storefronts this year, according to a report in Recode. People familiar with the company’s plans reportedly told Recode some of the new high-tech stores are likely to open in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle, where the first location is, as well as Los Angeles. It’s not clear if Amazon will open Go stores in any other cities this year. In Los Angeles, Amazon reportedly held talks with billionaire developer Rick Caruso about bringing a Go store to The Grove, his 600,000-square-foot outdoor shopping center. And in Seattle, Amazon identified at least three locations for additional Go stores as of last year, according to one source. The first Amazon Go store opened one month ago. The store replaces cashiers with a checkout-free shopping experience made with with what Amazon calls "Just Walk Out" technology that uses computer vision, deep learning algorithms and sensor fusion.

Total Retail's Take: Amazon must be seeing success with its stores of the future if it's planning to open more of them. The online behemoth said it decided to create Amazon Go after imagining a shopping experience with no lines and no checkout, where it could push the boundaries of computer vision and machine learning. Amazon is hoping that by making convenience store trips faster, it will raise the bar for brick-and-mortar shopping in much the same way that Amazon Prime did for online shopping and delivery. If the company does open an Amazon Go store in Los Angeles, it would mark just the latest example of Amazon using that city as an early testing ground for new products and services. Los Angeles was the first city that Amazon expanded its Amazon Fresh grocery delivery service to after incubating it for more than five years in Seattle. More recently, Amazon announced that it will roll out a test of its new service for businesses, Shipping with Amazon, in Los Angeles in the coming weeks.