A Field Trip to Amazon 4-Star: Is the future of retail more physical stores?

Shortly before the strictest messaging came out on “social distancing”, we took a little field trip.

Amazon is opening more physical stores beyond buying Whole Foods. In our neck of the woods, an Amazon branded grocery store is being built, and recently a “4-Star” opened up in the local mall.

It’s a cute concept, trending products, with reviews above four stars on Amazon, are stocked in a physical retail location.

If you’ve ever been to a Kohls or a TJ-Maxx, Amazon 4-Star is going to be really familiar. Cut the floor space for clothing and apparel, the focus is on kitchen, home goods, entertainment, and tech.

You’ll have to pardon the still photos, I was trying to be discrete. The store had just opened, and shooting a ton of video wasn’t going to work.

There’s a slightly chaotic feel to the displays. It’s not untidy, categories are laid out in an easy to understand way, but there is a feeling like these displays and product shelves are really fluid. You’re supposed to feel like new product will be swapped out frequently.

There’s obviously a heavy focus on Amazon products and services. Kindle and Fire products are prominently displayed, but there were also some interesting choices for other product categories. In electronics for example, a surprisingly well laid out collection of Chromebooks.

There’s a lot to peruse. A few stations felt disjointed, where you’d have kids toys in one section, then art supplies and stem kits in a different section, and then board games and collectibles on the opposite side of the store.

But that chaos seems to help. Stopping just shy of overloading your senses. Marie found some ice packs she’d been looking for for a while in the kitchen section. Amazon managed to squeeze a sale out of us on our first recon.

Amazon already has a built-in club program with Amazon Prime. There were sales tags on certain products where prime members would receive a discount.

But I was disappointed to see how separate this physical retail location was from Amazon the web service. Speaking with one of the employees, there isn’t a way currently to check if a product you want to buy is stocked locally. If it’s a trending product on Amazon’s home site, then it’ll PROBABLY be stocked in a 4-Star? Maybe?

While this seems like a no-brainer as warehouse space to field returns or exchanges, Amazon might still send a customer with a return to another location, or ask for some other kind of shipping solution. You can’t just roll up with an approved RMA and drop it off.

There’s something charming about a physical store. Somewhere you can check something out in person before you drop cash. But coming from Amazon, there’s a philosophical unease I have with how large this company is, and the way they compete with partners in the retail space.

Amazon recently made Kohls a partner for in-store returns, but a space like Four Star would seem a clear shot at Kohl’s retail strategy. Amazon can use its incredible resources to push smaller players out of the online space. There’s a fog of a concern about Amazon adopting Wal-Mart style tactics to muscle physical retailers out of the way too.

As a first experience, a small shop in a mall, something that builds on the Amazon Home kiosks we’ve seen before, this was a positive step. The hope is more physical retail shops take this competition seriously, and step up their game. Ultimately we want more and better competition.

The fact that this is Amazon though, I can’t shake that vaguely uneasy feeling.

Have you shopped in an amazon retail store? Is this the hook to get you out of the house and shopping off line? Drop a comment down below. Let’s chat.