The report quotes a certain Sandeep Mathrani, who is the CEO of mall operator General Growth Properties, in which he said during an earnings call, “You’ve got Amazon opening brick-and-mortar bookstores and their goal is to open, as I understand, 300 to 400.” It is unclear as to how Mathrani arrived at those numbers, but the report speculates that he might have gotten it from real-estate executives handling Amazon’s business.
Unsurprisingly Amazon declined to comment when asked about the report. Based on this, it would seem to suggest that the first bookstore they opened was a success, but to make the leap to 300-400 outlets does seem to be rather excessive. Not to mention we have seen many bookstores shut their doors in the recent years, with Borders being one of the more notable ones.
To a certain extent it also rather ironic considering that one of the advantages of shopping on Amazon is that you get to browse their entire collection, whilst physical bookstores might not carry certain titles or could be out of stock. In any case take it with a grain of salt, but how does the idea of more physical Amazon bookstores sound to you?