Amazon closed all 68 of its Books, 4-star and Pop Up stores in one stroke

Amazon's brick-and-mortar experiment began with Amazon Books in Seattle in 2015 and grew into three formats: bookstores, Amazon 4-star shops stocking products rated 4 stars and above by its customers, and small Pop Up locations — 68 stores in all, across the US and the UK.

The unit never justified itself: physical-store sales in 2021 were lower than in 2018, noticeably lagging Amazon's overall retail business, which in the same period posted its slowest quarterly growth since 2001. On 2 March 2022 Amazon announced the closure of all 68 stores — every Books, 4-star and Pop Up location, across thirteen US states and Britain.

Amazon kept the formats with a defensible job — Whole Foods, bought for $13.7 billion in 2017, Amazon Fresh, Amazon Go — and pushed ahead with the new Amazon Style clothing stores. Affected employees were offered other Amazon roles or severance. The retailer that had been predicted to conquer malls conceded that a shelf of its own bestsellers was not a reason to visit.