People Liked Malls
Since 2005, Amazon has changed how virtually every American shops. That February, the company launched Prime, the first-of-its-kind, lightning-fast subscription delivery service that now has an estimated 147 million members in the United States. Along the way, Amazon invented its own shopping holiday, assembled an army of couriers schlepping your packages in the trunks of their cars, and turned toilet paper into the kind of thing that people have sent to their homes by the case. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has made enough money to launch himself into space. Now we appear to know what Amazon’s next great innovation might be: building department stores.
On Thursday, that Amazon is planning to test several U.S.-based locations of a new brick-and-mortar retail concept that will focus on stuff like clothes, housewares, and electronics—the kinds of things you might have bought in a department store at the mall before the online shopping report, an Amazon spokesperson said only, “We don’t comment on rumors and speculation.”)
