An Amazon store has landed in Akron, opening near the University of Akron and providing students and Akron-area residents a direct link to pick up packages the next day from the online retail giant.
The store also provides free returns on most shipments back to Amazon.
The Amazon@Akron store is only the 12th in the country and the second in Ohio.
At the location at 290 E. Exchange St., Amazon Prime customers and Prime Student customers receive free one-day pickup for orders placed by 10 p.m. on more than 2 million items. Packages are usually available between 10 a.m. and noon the next day, said Amazon officials.
Amazon Prime customers can already get free two-day shipping to their homes, but some customers, especially students, like the convenience of a location to pick up their items the next day or don’t want to have items left on their porch, said Ripley MacDonald, Amazon director of student programs.
“We hear from schools that getting packages through their school mail systems is not a convenient thing,” said MacDonald, who was in town from Amazon headquarters in Seattle for the ceremonial grand opening of the store, which began operating in June. Amazon officials said they wanted to be ready when UA students start back to school soon.
The store is designed in a self-serve manner, though there are staffers available if a customer would like to pick up a package at the counter or interact with an Amazon staffer for a customer service issue, MacDonald said.
But in surveys among potential student customers, MacDonald said “many expressed a desire to not talk to a person when they pick up a package.”
Here’s how it works:
When a package has arrived at the store, the customer will get an email notification. The customer then replies by indicating when he or she is going to come to the store. An Amazon employee will then take the package, which has been sorted in the back room, and puts it in one of 176 different sized lockers accessible from the lobby.
The customer then brings in a smartphone — or uses a kiosk in the lobby — to find out which group of lockers the item is in, scans a code and the correct locker opens up.
“It’s more efficient,” MacDonald said of the lockers. “You’ll see we get very big peaks when the students are back to school.”
Free returns are also available for any Amazon customers (not just Prime members) on items fulfilled by Amazon. Items fulfilled by third-party retailers through Amazon are not eligible for free returns. Non-Prime Amazon customers can also get packages delivered to the store, though they are not eligible for the free next-day option.
Amazon Prime memberships are available for $99 a year. Amazon Student Prime memberships are available for $49 a year.
MacDonald said the first Amazon store opened in January 2015, and the focus has been large school campuses. Akron was also chosen because it has a density of population, and officials expect both students and community members to use the location.
And here’s a plus: The UA location was chosen before Ohio State University. The first Ohio location was at the University of Cincinnati. MacDonald said the retailer is working on getting a location near OSU.
Having Amazon@Akron choose downtown Akron as one of its early locations is the “start of something big,” said Sam DeShazior, deputy mayor for economic development for the city of Akron.
It brings technology, package delivery and customer service to what Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan has been calling the “innovation corridor,” DeShazior said.
“This is an added complement to make this community more customer driven,” said DeShazior, who thinks the location will be used heavily by students, working millennials and other Akron-area residents.
The store is also the future of logistics, said Rick Rebadow, executive vice president of the Greater Akron Chamber.
“The fact that we could attract them here shows we have something to sell. This will help downtown. I think we’ll do them proud,” he said.
Earlier this year, Amazon revealed it plans to build a distribution center in Twinsburg that would employ the equivalent of 150 full-time workers. This would be one of the company’s “fulfillment” centers, different from the small pickup places.
Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her @blinfisherABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/BettyLinFisherABJ