An Ealing Experiment in The Future of Retail

The first Amazon Fresh 'contactless' store outside the US

Queuing at the weekend for the new store pic credit - Jon Ball

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Amazon Opens Its Store on the Broadway

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Love it or hate it, it's here, and the eyes of the world (or at least the national media) have been focussed on Ealing.

As if the last year hasn't felt like we've all been living out a real life Sci-Fi film, Amazon has added another touch.
The new shop in Ealing Broadway Centre ( formerly Monsoon) - which was kept top secret until the opening - has no checkouts, you walk out with the produce and the company’s smartphone app automatically bills you as you leave.

Curiosity got the better of many at the weekend and the queues for this new retail experience were huge.

I *thought* about visiting but the negative voice outweighed any positive so I took myself away from consumer land and enjoyed Kew Gardens instead - a world away from this hi-tech brave new world.

However, I noticed Ealing Liberal Democrat Councillor Jon Ball had been interviewed on the news about it, so I asked him to recount his trip.

Cllr Jon Ball interviewed by ITN

He told us, "Walking out of the new Amazon Fresh store in Ealing Broadway with a bag of food I felt like a shoplifter. There are no tills at all, with or without operators. But it's perfectly legal as the hundreds of cameras and sensors dangling from the ceiling detect what you've picked up and half an hour after leaving you get a receipt sent to your phone.

The food is good - at the higher end of what you'd expect at a convenience store and competitively priced. But what everyone is talking about are the pros and cons of Amazon coming to Ealing.

I broadly welcome this addition to the Broadway. While Amazon don't pay their fair share of tax, the same is true of many global companies that already have an Ealing presence like Starbucks or Vodafone. The solution to that is international action to tax multinationals properly.

This technology clearly poses a risk to retail jobs over the long term but here in Ealing now we have a shop that was empty since Monsoon closed and so employing nobody that is now providing some jobs. Also due to the novelty value of the first Amazon store outside the US we will get some visitors to Ealing who will come to try it and may spend money in a local coffee shop before they get back on the tube. And of course it brings in some business rates.

So this isn't one of the local independently owned shops that we all love but I'm glad that it's here.''

Whilst Cllr Ball may be welcoming it, many do not and have vowed never to set foot there, preferring to support local independent traders rather than provide further profits to this global colossus.
There have also been worries over data management and although Amazon says any information collected will only be held for 30 days, some have expressed reservations.

However, former Ealing based technology and CX analyst Mark Hillary says this tech can actually work in the customers' favour.

He told us, '' Privacy experts are worried about the tracking system, but really I think we are all giving away far more on social networks. What Amazon wants to know is when and how often you buy different products and can they correlate that to other variables like do you buy beer before big football matches or do you buy more soup when the weather is cold? If they know all this they will start pinging "special offers' to individual people - like "Use this code in the next 2 hours to get 10% off beer" sent out before a big Champions League game. I suspect the discounts in other grocery stores will look lame if Amazon does this well. The really big deal will come if they buy a chain like Co-op and roll this out nationally... Ealing is just an experiment in the future of retail.''

Amazon say the Ealing store is the first outside North America and plan a number more openings across London.

Annemarie Flanagan

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8 March 2020