It’s a widely accepted fact that brick and store sales for Amazon have gotten off to a poor start. Yet, Amazon seems not to give up as it is still striving to develop its empire, despite putting the brakes on some expansion plans and recently announcing it will lay off more than 18000 workers.
COVID is to blame
CEO Andy Jassy wants to “go big” with its brick-and-mortar grocery store division, but only 10% of the company’s revenue comes from its physical retail section. Amazon paid $13.7 billion to acquire Whole Foods in 2017, but it has yet to completely take over the supermarket industry. In an effort to discover a structure and formula that works, Amazon recently announced layoffs in its food section, shuttered many of its Fresh shops, and postponed plans to create new ones. Jassy pointed out that Amazon hasn’t had a lot of normality because many Fresh outlets debuted in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Amazon announced a year ago that it would be shutting all of its bookshops, four-star stores, and pop-up sites in the US and UK. This was intended to focus on traditional clothes retailers and supermarkets, but Amazon’s intentions to expand into groceries were delayed, costing the company $720 million in the most recent quarter.
