Putting that number in perspective, Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS) has 640 stores, and Books-a-Million 255 (NASDAQ:BAMM).
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“You’ve got Amazon opening brick-and-mortar bookstores and their goal is to open, as I understand, 300 to 400 bookstores”, Sandeep Mathrani, chief executive of General Growth Properties Inc (GGP.N), said on Tuesday. Both companies spent years building out their retail operations. Physical bookstores quickly turned into showroom floors where people would browse and then go buy books for cheap at Amazon.
It wasn’t immediately clear how Mr. Mathrani got Amazon’s figure, but he could have potentially spoken with Amazon’s real-estate executives about their plans. Amazon representatives declined to answer our questions, particularly whether Mathrani was in a position to make such estimates, beyond telling Ars that “we don’t comment on rumors and speculation”. General Growth is the owner and operator of 120 malls and similar retail centers, so presumably we’re talking about smaller mall-sized bookstores, the niche that stores like Waldenbooks and Book World used to occupy (and in some cases, still does).
According to CNBC, Amazon has promised that books and materials sold at the physical Amazon Books stores will not differ in price from their online counterparts.
If the remarks prove true, Amazon’s mall foray would fall in line with similar moves by other Internet-based retailers, such as Bonobos and Warby Parker.
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Amazon already has one physical store that opened back in November.
