Amazon's nine-year retail push in the city-state is shrinking. The firm is closing Amazon Fresh, ending food deals, and cutting local jobs.
The reason buyers gave: they wanted things from other countries.
What Is Closing
Amazon Fresh in the city will shut on July 6. That ends two-hour food drop-off there.
Partner stores inside Amazon Fresh, like Watsons and Little Farms, close at the same time. The firm told buyers in an email this week.
The Amazon.sg shop stays open. Amazon Prime, which costs S$4.99 a month for video and free shipping, sticks around as well.
Members will not see refunds. The shift only affects local stocked goods and the speed of delivery.
Why It Failed
Amazon launched its full local site in 2019 and added Fresh later. Last year, it doubled down with a same-day "basics" store.
Country chief Peter Li said in a blog post that buyers really wanted goods from the US, Germany, and Japan stores. The retail plan from those big markets did not click here.
Local rivals took the wins. Shoppers stuck with FairPrice, Sheng Siong, and Lazada's Redmart.
Cold-chain costs were also a hard fit. The city's small size and high land prices make local food storage costly to run.
The Job Cuts
The firm has about 2,500 staff in the city. They work in retail, cloud, devices, and other units.
Less than 10% of that group will be cut. Some workers will get new roles inside the firm.
Others will leave with a severance check and career help. The cloud unit, AWS, is not hit by the change.
AWS has long been the firm's strongest unit in Asia. It will keep its big local data center push.
The Bigger Asia Pullback
The firm has been cutting back on local retail in markets where it never built scale. The Singapore shutdown is the latest in a multi-year retreat.
Amazon first entered Singapore in 2017 with a fast delivery app. It then opened a full retail site in 2019 and added Amazon Fresh later that year.
CEO Andy Jassy has been pushing what the firm calls an "anti-bureaucracy" reset. The goal is fewer doubled-up teams and more focus on units that make money.
The shift comes as the firm leans on AWS profits to fund AI work. That has made the case for shutting down small retail bets that lose cash an easy one.
For shoppers, the trade-off is clear. They lose two-hour food drop-off. They gain a wider mix of goods at the cost of slower shipping.
What to Watch
Lazada and Redmart now pick up most of the food buyers Amazon is leaving. Whether they raise prices to match the new demand will decide how much shoppers feel the change.
The city's online retail market is set to keep growing through 2030. The firm will still get a slice of that, just from outside the country.
Some Prime members may shift to the FairPrice app for food runs. Others may lean on the firm's stores in the US, Germany, and Japan for non-fresh goods.
The shift to ship-from-abroad also means longer waits. Most goods will now take three to five days to arrive instead of hours.
