Let 100 Amazon Pop-Up Stores Bloom

Many retailers want to boost their online presence to compete with Amazon’s delivery speed and two-day turnaround guarantees.

Amazon, conversely, is building out its physical presence. Fortune reported that the firm intents to extend its pop-up store roster at what might be called a dizzying speed. At the end of last year, Amazon had a half-dozen small pop-up stores, generally the province of malls and located in kiosks. The new number is nearly two dozen, scattered across a dozen states in the U.S. The firm, said Fortune, now plans on as many as 30 stores by the end of this year and an even 100 cumulative locations through the end of next year. The lure of the locations is to give hands-on trials to would-be consumers who want to test out hardware, such as the Kindle or tablets prior to purchase.

Fortune, quoting Business Insider, said that this is a new way for Amazon to marshal website traffic, on the assumption that customers will naturally gravitate toward buying the items online. As for the stores themselves? A makeover might loom, as they could conceivably be a lot bigger than the few hundred square feet currently the hallmark of the pop-up locations.