Amazon Pop-up Stores Tied to Retail Store Plans?

Giant online retailer Amazon (AMZN) will open a new pop-up outlet in a heavily trafficked San Francisco shopping mall and another kiosk in Sacramento, first reported by GeekWire and subsequently confirmed by the company.

The San Francisco store, which is said to carry an Oct. 22 opening date, is located in the Westfield San Francisco Centre near the center of the City’s downtown district. There’s no word on where Amazon’s Sacramento outlet will be located, but Westfield also operates a mall in nearby Roseville.

The new Amazon pop-ups, combined with chatter last week that it will open a physical store in New York City on 34th Street near the Empire State Building and Macy’s, raises questions about whether the online retailer is stepping up its brick-and-mortar store plans.

An Amazon spokesperson said the pop-up store is intended for the holiday season. At this point, Amazon has made no official announcement about the store, nor has it said how long the venue will stay open or exactly where in the mall the outlet is located.

“We’re excited to open new pop-up kiosks in San Francisco and Sacramento in time for the holidays so that customers can try out our new devices,” the spokesperson said. “The team is moving incredibly quickly—already this year we’ve launched Fire TV, Fire phone, new Fire tablets, new Kindle e-readers and a bunch of new features and services. While customers can already see our products online and at retailers like Best Buy (BBY) and Staples (SPLS), we wanted to provide another option to try out our full lineup leading into the holidays.”

Westfield operates 40 shopping centers in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe that collectively generate $17 billion in retail sales from some 425 million customer visits, according to the company’s website. The San Francisco location features 193 shops visited by some 16.5 million people annually and produces about $612 million in sales yearly.

In August, Amazon said it planned to open brick-and-mortar stores pointed at familiarizing developers with its Amazon Web Services (AWS) business to amp up its competition with rivals Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) for cloud services sales. The initiative includes reopening a “pop-up loft” that it operated in San Francisco for about a month earlier this year, followed by additional stores in other geographies, according to Ariel Kelman, AWS Worldwide Marketing vice president.

Amazon’s drawing-board plans for a physical store in New York City indicate it will operate as a small warehouse, housing a limited inventory for same-day delivery, product returns and exchanges, with customers allowed to show up at the store to pick up orders made online, the Wall Street Journal reported.