Amazon Locker comes to Jax

[spuwho]

Not sure if anyone noticed, but Amazon Lockers are springing up through greater Jacksonville.

Many are located at Speedway gas stations or at Papa John's pizza stores.

Peestandingup brought this up 5 years ago (!) when Amazon was first doing a trial.

Now they are growing here.



We used one the other day to return an item back to Amazon.

You just walk up, enter the return code into the panel and a box door will spring open and you place your item inside and shut the door.

Amazon then electronically notes the item as returned.

An Amazon van comes by periodically to clear out the lockers, and place items for pick up inside (if you desire a locker for delivery)

The pix above is the locker at the Speedway on Hodges & Beach.

[ProjectMaximus]

Saw these in NYC a few years ago. I read the other day that Walmart is trying to use its B&M as a competitive advantage against Amazon. They will be rolling out discounts for online only items if you choose to ship to the store for pickup. So when you're online shopping with them, instead of shipping to your home for free, you get an extra discount to ship to store, where I guess their infrastructure means there's really no extra cost for Walmart.

If the lockers become ubiquitous and generate high traffic, this would wipe away Walmart's "advantage"

[peestandingup]

Peestandingup brought this up 5 years ago (!) when Amazon was first doing a trial.

Now they are growing here.

As soon as I saw their plans, along with how apps & smartphones were evolving (esp w the younger gens), it was really a no-brainer. Places like Best Buy could've jumped on it & had a massive head start since they already had a lot of "distribution centers" (storefronts) scattered across the country, but they didn't & kept the same model. Products more or less sell themselves these days based on online research & reviews (NOT employees), so sacking half their employees & scaling back to more of an online showroom with local pickup at low non-retail competitive pricing would've been the way to go.

Then they're completely crazy & out of touch with reality. Any CEO would fail if they kept with the same vision because of simply what it is at hand. They'll end up suing each other & tearing the company apart instead of seeing the big picture. Best Buy, and most retail like this, needs to start the painful process of scaling back these huge storefronts, fire a bunch of zit faced employees who aren't needed, increase their online presence & use the store spaces for pick ups, exchanges, distribution, etc.

Amazon has it right. Check this out: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-locker-2012-8 Yes, its small & not in a lot of cities. But I can imagine a not too distant future where people just order what they want online, even bigger items, & go pick it up locally. Maybe even the same day if distribution centers are close by. And with very little overhead so prices remain the cheapest they can.

This is the kind of major disruptions I'm talking about. I'd bet anything that most the big box & other retail crap is gonna go bye bye in the next decade. Blanding Blvd will look like a damn bomb hit it.

Amazon now will have two distribution centers in Jacksonville, so essentially you could buy something at "Amazon prices" & pick it up at your locker the same or next day. Looking at their locker map, I see they put one directly across the street from the Best Buy in Orange Park & its open 24/7, lol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZslldczL5FM