GTrusted

Amazon recently came set up pop up stores around California to help showcase its own Fire and Kindle products.  Some may scratch their heads and wonder why such an online retail giant would want to set up a physical store when the e-retailing model has been so successful.

But what if there was some dark future where most of the big retail stores were gone, and everything was online.  One can catch a glimpse of that future in the Czech Republic where online giants like Alza had to operate in an environment where there were already several weaker bricks and mortar retail players.  It wasn't as easy for customers to just go into a retail store, demo the product, and then decide to purchase online.  Plus, people in the Czech Republic are not as free wheeling with their credits cards as in the US so an alternative cash payment system is needed.

To solve this, Alza and other online retail companies have set up massive offline retail presence.  I checked out one of the Alza stores in Prague.

With plenty of parking, the Alza store was packed with people.  It was an interesting experience seeing that all the people in the store who had made a purchase had done so offline.  There is actually no traditional "take your product to a register and they will ring you up" service available.

Similar to stores like BestBuy, Alza has setup mini stores for major brands like Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and Sony.

Alza also has a cafe so that you can spend even more time in their store.

To make a purchase at the store, most people just use one of the many laptops lying around with Internet access.  Alternatively, you can ask one of the sales associates to help you make an online order for you.  I purchased the TomTom Multi-Sports Watch.  Both Garmin and TomTom were giants in the GPS navigation system market and have since moved to wearables as more people use their phones for GPS navigation.

After helping me place the order, the sales associate then directed me to the payment area.

You first need to get a ticket if want to make the purchase with an actual person.  Just lining up like in a normal store doesn't work.  You need to wait your turn.

Alternatively, you can just directly pay using cash at one of the many automated payment stations.  This is really useful in countries where credit card use is less popular.

Finally, after you make your purchase, you get a receipt with a number.  You need to walk through all the product display areas again to get to the product receiving area at the other side of the building.  Once you see your number on one of the screens, you can just go there and pick up the product.

The entire purchase process reminded me of my childhood days shopping at the now defunct physical stores of Service Merchandise, which was pre-Internet but had a similar catalog plus showroom setup. While Service Merchandise stores died after the onslaught of Walmart, BestBuy, and online retail, it looks like Alza has proven that an effective large scale offline/online model works and consumers get to enjoy the best of both worlds.