Amazon hasn’t officially confirmed that it is going to open a real-life store in New York City, though “people familiar with the plans” told the Wall Street Journal about the company’s planned , and there’s definitely something about to open in the space across the street from the Empire State Building. However, the company has confirmed that it’s opening two seasonal pop-up shops in San Francisco and Sacramento, California.

The San Francisco store will be a kiosk inside the Westfield San Francisco Centre, an urban mall near the headquarters of some influential tech companies. In a statement to CNET, Amazon explained that the goal of the pop-up shops isn’t to promote the Amazon site, exactly. As far as anyone knows, they won’t include warehouse space or online order pickup, which is one of the rumored purposes of the alleged Manhattan store. The real purpose of Amazon stores is to get Amazon’s own products, the Kindle and Fire lines of phones and tablets and the Fire TV, into customers’ hands to try them out.

“While customers can already see our products online and at retailers like Best Buy and Staples, we wanted to provide another option to try out our full lineup leading into the holidays,” Amazon said in its statement confirming the San Francisco store.

Amazon to open retail pop-up store in San Francisco [CNET]

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