See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers_Distributing for an example of the pre-internet version of this exact model.
Sh** just got real: Amazon to open actual shop in New York City
Proving the old adage that everything old is new again, Amazon is reportedly planning to open its first-ever bricks-and-mortar location in New York City, just in time for the holiday shopping season. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the e-commerce titan is beavering away at renovating a space at 7 West 34th …
COMMENTS
-
-
Friday 10th October 2014 02:55 GMT channel extended
Optimal Thinking.
Read an article on slashdot that Amazon is offering a $20,000 prize to the team that can build a robot picker. (Cheap b**tards, no spending on R&D will design a robot for that price.) Obviously this is another way to avoid having pickers. Customers will pay to choose thier own stuff. Kind of like Sam's Warehouse.
Wonder if the customer will have to go through security?
-
-
-
-
Friday 10th October 2014 09:02 GMT Ralph B
Re: Argos!
(Maybe we should explain who Argos are to any non-UK readers. (I'm amused to see they've now added an Amazon style "smile"-underline to their logo. Maybe they're hoping for a takeover.))
-
Friday 10th October 2014 12:08 GMT Stretch
Re: Argos!
I've always said Amazon should buy Argos. Its the PERFECT eCommerce Real World Store. Whole business is set up for Click and Collect. Fantastic retail locations in and out of town.
Argos is everything I want in a shop: online catalog, same day collection or delivery, free reservation with minimal signup, self service PoS terminals in every shop, no quibble returns policy and I can usually park right outside for free.
-
-
Friday 10th October 2014 17:37 GMT Timo
"Service Merchandise" catalog showrooms
Everything that is old is new again - there were "catalog showrooms" all over the US, where you roamed through displays of goods, wrote down what you wanted, paid for it, and then waited.... while your "salesman" ran into the back to go pull it off a shelf and assemble your order. Never did understand the point of them. The last of them went tits-up about 20 years ago.
I imagine that they were killed by the big-box retailers where you do all the work yourself and save them the money of having to pull your order.
The other thing that is already back on the "reinvented" is the catalog pickup shelves. When I was a kid, a few of the major US department stores had storefronts locally that were nothing more than shelves of deliveries. You'd make a catalog order over the phone, then you could go locally to pick it up, almost like a department-store's own post-office-box solution. Haven't we seen those recently?