I’ve made a number of references to the location of Foot Locker stand alone stores. I’ve also discussed the location of stores owned by City Gear as a way of showing who sneaker companies are attempting to reach with the multitude of aspirational (shout out Matt Powell for the word aspirational) footwear options created.
If that paragraph is unclear, let me break it down as simple as possible: most sneaker stores are in the hood.
Is that clear? Okay, that’s out of the way… it’s also a bit of hyperbole, but seriously if you look at the overlap of sneaker stores in cities you will find that standalone Foot Locker stores (the biggest sneaker retailer in the country) are primarily in low income areas. The same with City Gear stores and Jimmy Jazz or DTLR locations that aren’t in malls. I state all of this to introduce you to a solution that Amazon has created to capture the dollar from the unbanked.
(Unbanked are people who don’t use the banking system and rely on cash)
Amazon Cash allows people to visit a number of locations to pay cash for items on Amazon. Here are a couple of locations of where people can pay cash:
All of the stores above are located in areas that you will find those who are unbanked. There are stores listed on the Amazon site that are more “traditional” locations, but let’s be real here, Amazon is attempting to capture the dollars of those people who are the first in line to buy Jordans during the holiday season. There are 106 million people unbanked in the U.S. according to Forbes.
While Amazon’s job isn’t to be ethical and no company that has shareholders is beholden to those who are impoverished, it would be nice if Amazon actually created banks instead of another why to pry money from the hands of people who don’t really have to spend. I guess it’s easy to say that those who are unbanked should be more responsible, and companies have a right to charge what they want, but Amazon Cash feels kind of dirty to me. Use the source link to read more about the new feature.
I guess at least now people in the hood have an alternative to Wal-Mart.