Amazon plans to open several department stores in the US, as the tech titan’s pivot to bricks-and-mortar retailing gathers pace.

The first of the new stores are expected to be in Ohio and California and will offer a range of products including clothing, household items and electronics, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The department stores will reportedly offer products from well-known consumer brands, as well as the company’s own-brand goods.

The new stores are expected to be spread across 30,000 sq ft, around a third of the size of a traditional department store. 

The move comes following a difficult pandemic for the traditional department store players in the US as restrictions accelerated existing trends, with more consumers opting to shop online rather than visit stores such as Macy’s and Nordstrom.

The new store concept would also be a further disruption of the retail sector by Amazon. It currently operates grocery stores powered by its Just Walk Out technology in the US and the UK, while the ecommerce behemoth acquired the Whole Foods Market grocery chain in 2017. This week, Amazon also revealed it would begin selling its own-brand food range online.

Amazon has also experimented with other physical formats, such as the Amazon Salon, which Retail Week revealed opened in London in April.

The reports around Amazon’s plans to expand its physical retail portfolio caused the share prices of its rivals to fall in premarket trading. Target and Best Buy shares fell around 1.5%, with Walmart shares dropping 1%, according to CNBC.

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