Kohl’s Partners With Amazon To Offer In-Store Smart Home Experience

Kohl’s has teamed up with Amazon to roll out a new smart home experience in 10 select Kohl’s stores across the Los Angeles and Chicago areas beginning in October. The new smart home space will offer a first-of-its-kind experience where customers can purchase Amazon devices, accessories and smart home devices and services directly from Amazon within the select Kohl’s stores.

The Amazon Smart Home Experience at Kohl’s will feature a 1,000-square-foot Amazon-dedicated space that provides hands-on, interactive and engaging smart home products with a variety of Amazon devices, including Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Amazon Fire TV and Fire tablets. 

“We are thrilled to offer a unique new way for customers to try out our lineup of Alexa-enabled Amazon devices, learn more about our smart home services from Amazon experts and then buy those items directly from Amazon—all within Kohl’s stores,” says Dave Zimmer, VP, sales and marketing, Amazon Devices.

Amazon sales associates with deep knowledge of Amazon devices and smart home products will staff the space. Customers can schedule an Amazon expert to come to their home, evaluate their needs and install smart home products. Customers can also take advantage of Amazon Home Services, which offers access to vetted local services professionals, to help with household tasks, from cleaning to plumbing.

The Amazon Smart Home Experience at Kohl’s is a part of the e-commerce giant’s ongoing expansion into brick-and-mortar, following its acquisition of Whole Foods Market. Amazon also revealed its plans to open Amazon HQ2, a second company headquarters in North America. Amazon expects to invest more than $5 billion in construction and grow its second headquarters to include as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs.

Amazon is searching for a city to host the second headquarters location and has opened the Amazon HQ2 Request for Proposal, where local and state government leaders can learn more about how they can bring Amazon to their community. Construction and ongoing operation of Amazon HQ2 is expected to create tens of thousands of additional jobs, and tens of billions of dollars in additional investment in the surrounding community.

“We expect HQ2 to be a full equal to our Seattle headquarters,” says Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “Amazon HQ2 will bring billions of dollars in up-front and ongoing investments, and tens of thousands of high-paying jobs. We’re excited to find a second home.”

Amazon HQ2 will be a complete headquarters for Amazon – not a satellite office. Amazon expects to hire new teams and executives in HQ2, and will also let existing senior leaders across the company decide whether to locate their teams in HQ1, HQ2 or both. The company expects that employees who are currently working in HQ1 can choose to continue working there, or they could have an opportunity to move if they would prefer to be located in HQ2.