[bastian]

I'm pretty sure that Amazon will use the best positioned stores as forward stocking locations. They experimented with a similar concept at WebVan i believe. I also think they now realize that what Postmates and Instacart are doing today (using the city as a warehouse) is actually working and can be attractive to customers.

[baddox]

My initial impression is that Radio Shack stores are too small to be used primarily for stocking.

[AdamTReineke]

They're small but if you took Amazon's warehouse layout and Kiva robots, you'd get an incredible storage density. Coupled with lockers, pre-stocked with Amazon's top products, and staffed by one or two people, you'd have a pretty good system.

[pbreit]

Wouldn't one cheap warehouse in the city(ies) suffice?

[bastian]

I can only talk about our (Postmates) experience but having multiple pickup and drop-off locations increases the efficiency of a fleet dramatically. In larger cities like New York, LA, etc. multiple warehouses are a huge advantage. Off course i'm mostly referring to on-demand or same day deliveries here.

Maybe i should add some more color here. If you think in terms of traditional delivery, one warehouse is enough. But i'm not sure that this paradigm (one van drives to a warehouse, collects a bunch of stuff and delivers it), is what works best for on-demand, 2-hour or same day deliveries. Multiple, fast and easy to reach pickup locations are an advantage at scale. Especially for deliveries where minutes matter.

Ultimately, we will probably see a combination of both.

[pbreit]

Probably true but there's not much that needs to be delivered in less than a few hours.

[CamperBob2]

That's a call that has to be made on the demand side. Some of us have a steady flow of overnight boxes coming in from DigiKey and Mouser containing, well, nothing very expensive or interesting to most people.

[bastian]

Figuring out if this statement is true or not, is very interesting indeed.