6/26

Above: Banana boat on the Amazon (the original) River

According to the Seattle Times:

Call it Amazon.com’s driverless store.

The tech giant has built a convenience store in downtown Seattle that deploys a gaggle of technologies similar to those used in self-driving cars to allow shoppers to come in, grab items and walk out without going through a register. 

The 1,800-square-foot store, officially dubbed “Amazon Go,” is the latest beach in brick-and-mortar retail stormed by the e-commerce giant, which already has bookstores and is working on secretive drive-thru grocery

In October Business Insider reported:

Amazon wants to open 20 brick-and-mortar grocery stores over the next two years, and the online retailer believes the US market has room for up to 2,000 of its Amazon Fresh-branded grocery stores over the next decade... Amazon is planning to operate a 20-location pilot program for its grocery stores by the end of 2018, in places like Seattle, Las Vegas, New York, Miami, and the Bay Area.

Amazon is a retail revolutionary, not just an online-retail pioneer.  It is reconceiving -- and rebuilding -- how demand is expressed and supplies are distributed/delivered.  As barges and boats once (still) use rivers, Amazon is creating its own digital stream.