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Amazon's hair salon in London. Photo by Mark Di Stefano

What It’s Like Getting a Haircut at an Amazon Salon

By  |  June 18, 2021 9:00 AM PDT
Photo: Amazon's hair salon in London. Photo by Mark Di Stefano

For a long time, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has been saying the company has a simple criterion for opening new categories of physical retail stores: Can it significantly improve on the traditional store experience? With its Amazon Go chain, for example, it used sensors, cameras and software to get rid of cashier checkout lines.

I had this in my head when I arrived at Amazon’s first-ever hair salon this week in the gentrified Spitalfields shopping area in East London, not far from where I live. I was excited. How was Amazon, the world-beating pioneer of retail and technology, planning to upend the global hairstyling industry?

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