Amazon later this week is opening a new store that sells items from its website rated 4 stars or above, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday, making a bigger push into bricks-and-mortar retail following its acquisition of Whole Foods and the gradual rollout of its cashier-less convenience stores.
The store is set to open this Thursday in New York's SoHo neighborhood, on 72 Spring Street. The company said Amazon Prime members will pay "the Amazon.com price" when they shop there. An Amazon spokeswoman said the store is permanent, not a pop-up location, as some of its shops — including one that sold Calvin Klein merchandise in SoHo last year — have been before.
The new store in SoHo is unlike any shop the e-commerce giant has rolled out before. Amazon currently has a handful of bookstores across the U.S. and is starting to open more of its cashier-less convenience stores known as Amazon Go.
Amazon said customers will find items like a mini skillet, card games and many of the company's own electronic devices including the Echo Spot and Fire TV Stick, in the new store, called Amazon 4-star. It said it will also include some "Trending Around NYC" items there, which Amazon is able to track on its website.
Amazon said digital price tags in the new store will show how much Prime members are saving, the average star rating and how many ratings a product has received, similar to what shoppers can see on the website today.
Just last week, it was reported Amazon was considering opening as many as 3,000 cashier-less convenience stores across the U.S. by 2020.
Read the full blog post about Amazon's latest announcement here.