Amazon pulls the plug on 87 pop-up stores

It’s a pop-up dust-up. Amazon will close all its retail pop-up stores by the end of April, the company announced Wednesday.

The e-commerce giant, which launched the small-store concept in 2014, said it had begun to tell employees of the 87 store closures, according to the Wall Street Journal. The pop-up stores, which are located in malls, and some of its Whole Foods stores, provide items like Echo, its voice-assistant speakers, and Kindle, its e-reader.

“After much review, we came to the decision to discontinue our pop-up kiosk program,” the company said.

The announcement follows the conglomerate’s dramatic withdrawal from plans to bring 25,000 jobs to a campus in Queens, and which it says is now being re-allocated to its current locations in Seattle, Crystal City and Nashville.

However, the company said it remains committed to developing a brick-and-mortar concept, and it will keep open its existing book stores and so-called 4-star stores, which sell products that customers have rated at four stars or more.

The company is also reportedly planning a large rollout of its cashless convenience stores, Amazon Go, and another grocery store brand. [WSJ] — David Jeans