Amazon To Shutter Old Orchard Locations, All Of Its Bookstores

SKOKIE, IL — Amazon plans to shutter all of its bookstores and other retail stores selling household items, including its outposts at Westfield Old Orchard Mall, company officials said Wednesday.

The Seattle-based online retailer, cloud computing provider and media company confirmed it will close 68 Amazon Books, Amazon Pop-Up and Amazon 4-star locations in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The stores will close on various dates and notify customers via signage, according to Reuters, which first reported the news. Amazon representatives did not specify how many jobs were being eliminated, but said workers will be eligible for severance or help finding a job at other company stores.

Amazon officials plan to focus on its other brick-and-mortar brands, including Whole Foods Market and Amazon Fresh grocery stores, Amazon Go convenience stores and plans for clothing stores called Amazon Style, according to the Associated Press.

“We remain committed to building great, long-term physical retail experiences and technologies, and we’re working closely with our affected employees to help them find new roles within Amazon," a company spokesperson said.

Amazon's first physical bookstores opened in 2015, with a Chicago location following in 2017. In 2018, it introduced its 4-star concept, which offer a limited selection of bestselling home goods products.

Last year, Evanston bookstore Bookends & Beginnings filed a federal lawsuit against Amazon seeking class action status and alleging that the company engages in monopolistic practices involving anticompetitive "most favored nation" agreements with publishers.

Owner Nina Barrett told the Chicago-Sun Times that, while the pandemic has been a boon for small, independent book stores, the end of the giant online retailer's Amazon Books experiment "doesn’t, obviously, remove Amazon from the playing field as a competitor to independent bookstores."

In addition to the Pop-Up and 4-star locations at Old Orchard, Amazon has a bookstore on Chicago's North Side and a 4-star shop in Oakbrook Center.

According to Reuters, only about 3 percent of Amazon's $137 billion in sales came from its brick-and-mortar locations, and most of that was from Whole Foods.

Related: Amazon Accused Of Price-Fixing Conspiracy By Evanston Bookstore