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Amazon still hasn’t fully given up on its mall kiosks

Amazon still hasn’t fully given up on its mall kiosks

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The new locations will showcase themed collections

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An illustration of the Amazon logo on the top of a building.
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon can’t seem to decide whether it wants its own mini-stores inside shopping malls. After the company decided earlier this year to close the many kiosks it had maintained at malls, a few new ones have sprung up. As Business Insider notes, Amazon’s revamped mall presence is being called “Presented by Amazon.”

Unlike the previous mall kiosks, which were showcases for Amazon’s Echo, Kindle e-readers, Fire TV, and other first-party hardware, this new approach offers “a themed selection of top brands, frequently updated and presented to you by Amazon.” So, as with its Amazon 4-star retail stores, it sounds like the selection at Presented by Amazon will be rotated out on a regular basis — and it won’t be limited to Amazon’s own products.

Image: Amazon

There are only four Presented by Amazon locations at the moment, with two in California and one each in Illinois and Nevada. Amazon was operating 87 mall kiosks as of March before announcing that they’d all be closing down. “After much review, we came to the decision to discontinue our pop-up kiosk program, and are instead expanding Amazon Books and Amazon 4-star, where we provide a more comprehensive customer experience and broader selection,” a spokesperson told The Verge at the time.

But clearly Amazon thinks putting itself in malls is still a worthwhile effort. The retailer’s website shows one Presented by Amazon space as being outdoors, but others are very much traditional kiosks, such as this one at the Century City mall.

Aside from 4-star, Amazon also continues to open new locations for its Amazon Go stores, most recently in New York City. Last month, the company said it would start accepting cash at the Go stores, which were originally positioned as wholly automated and cashier-free.