Amazon.com Inc. is taking its brick-and-mortar bookstores to New York, with plans to open a location in a prime Manhattan shopping center.
The store will open later this year in Related Co.’s Shops at Columbus Circle, Amazon said in an e-mailed statement. The tony shopping center is part of the Time Warner Center complex, just steps from Central Park.
The online retail giant opened its first physical bookstore in Seattle in 2015 and has since opened two more, in California and Oregon. Locations in Chicago and Massachusetts are in the works too, according to the company’s website.
The New York store is to open in the spring and will be located on the third floor, in a space formerly occupied by Armani Exchange, according to a person familiar with the plans. The shop will be able to fill orders and send them anywhere in the world, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported on the opening of the 4,000-square-foot store.
Amazon upended the retail world with its ever-expanding online presence, but has begun building physical stores to let customers discover new products and test its line of e-readers and tablets before buying them. Books aren’t the only place Amazon is toying with the idea of a physical store. It’s testing out a system at a grocery store in Seattle that tracks which items a shopper picks up and lets the person leave the store without going through check out, charging the customer’s Amazon account automatically.
Last year, a mall executive speculated Amazon could open as many as 400 physical stores, sending the shares of bookstore chain Barnes and Noble Inc. plunging.
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