Amazon.com Inc said on Wednesday it plans to close all 68 of its brick-and-mortar bookstores, pop-ups and shops carrying toys and home goods in the United States and United Kingdom, ending some of its longest-running retail experiments.
The news, which Reuters was first to report, marks a turning point for a company that began as an online bookseller and helped drive established rivals such as Borders to bankruptcy. Amazon said it would focus more on its grocery markets and a department store concept going forward.
But the company's innovations were not enough to counter the march toward online shopping that Amazon itself had set off. Its "physical stores" revenue - a mere 3% of Amazon's $137 billion in sales last quarter, largely reflective of consumer spending at its Whole Foods subsidiary - has often failed to keep pace with growth in the retailer's other businesses.
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