 |
|
| photo: Dillon Pilorget/The Oregonian/OregonLive | |
The Oregonian offered "an exclusive sneak peek" at the Amazon Books store that's opening soon in the Washington Square Mall in Tigard, Ore., near Portland. It's Amazon's third bookstore, after the locations in Seattle, Wash., and San Diego, Calif.
The store opened for several hours on Saturday, "testing its new location before it opens permanently sometime this week," the paper wrote. It's an area that "has been without a bookstore since 2012, when Barnes & Noble closed its store near the mall and moved to Bridgeport Village."
The Tigard store is 7,800 square feet and stocks about 5,200 titles, with 20% of the space devoted to devices like the Kindle and Echo. The store is substantially larger than the other two Amazon Books: the Seattle store has 5,500 square feet of space, and the San Diego store has 3,500 square feet of space. But the Tigard store stocks only about 200 more books than the Seattle store.
Jennifer Cast, v-p of Amazon Books, told the Oregonian that although the store is meant to be an extension of Amazon's website, showrooming doesn't happen as much as Amazon expected. "Mostly," the paper wrote, "customers follow the traditional retail pattern, she said: They see something they like, and they buy it in the store."
The Amazon stores stock only books with "an average rating of four stars or more as well as new books selected by Amazon staff."
"Our goal is not to find bestsellers," Cast said. "Our goal is to find books that customers will love." Cast added that Amazon is "very happy" with the performance of the Seattle store.