Amazon may be set to open its biggest Go store yet (AMZN)

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Amazon is reportedly developing a large-scale retail location in Seattle that appears to be a 10,400-square foot Amazon Go store, per Grocery Dive. Amazon’s existing cashierless stores all have footprints below 2,500 square feet, making this location its largest by a massive margin.

It has not been confirmed that the location is set to open, or that it’s an Amazon Go store rather than part of Amazon’s forthcoming grocery chain or another initiative, but "if you stand on the sidewalk and squint through a gap in the frosted glass, you can just make out the telltale shelving of what appears to be an Amazon Go store," per Bloomberg, and the location was used for testing in the early days of Amazon Go’s development.

Here’s what it means: If it’s introducing this bigger store, Amazon will need to be able to contend with the two biggest hurdles facing the development of autonomous checkout.

The store will need to be able to successfully track consumers and products on a much larger scale than it has previously. Up to now, stores that feature autonomous checkout — where consumers identify themselves when they enter a store with an app or other process, grab the items they want, and leave without physically checking out because they are charged digitally — have all been small, convenience store-sized stores. This is because tracking larger numbers of consumers and products across a bigger store can be difficult for the technology, which generally uses computer vision and camera networks to keep tabs on consumers and the products they take. This new Amazon Go store, if it indeed opens, would be the first of its kind.
It will need to be equipped with payments solutions that address the rising backlash against cashless stores in the US.The store concept’s cashierless experience likely needs to be adapted as governments in several US jurisdictions are considering banning cashless stores because of how they can discriminate against unbanked consumers. Amazon already added the ability to accept cash at one of its New York City locations, but the new store would need to be set up to accept cash as well, which could prove difficult and create significant friction in a bigger store with more shoppers.

The bigger picture: Opening a bigger Amazon Go store would solidify Amazon’s position at the top of the autonomous checkout industry even as competitors pop up.

Amazon is already the highest-profile player in autonomous checkout, and launching a large-scale store would put it miles ahead of its mounting competition. Many autonomous checkout providers have announced partnerships with retailers to outfit them with their technologies, but none have opened stores to the public through these partnerships, and all of their test locations are small. If Amazon adds a large-scale store before its competitors like Standard Cognition and Trigo Vision even get started, it will have a commanding lead in the industry, but other companies could still succeed in the space as Amazon has not yet shown interest in licensing its technologies to others.

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