Tech
Sub Pop Records leaving Amazon HQ space for new store on Seattle waterfront
Longtime Seattle independent record label Sub Pop Records is leaving Amazonia.
The company announced via social media on Thursday that its retail store at 2130 7th Ave., at the base of Amazon’s re:Invent headquarters tower, is closing this Sunday after five years.
A new Sub Pop store will open April 1 on the Seattle waterfront in the Maritime Building at 908 Alaskan Way.
The move comes a few months after Sub Pop closed its Sea-Tac Airport location at the end of 2025, ending a 12-year run for that space near the entrance of Concourse C.
Sub Pop set up its brick-and-mortar shop in the heart of Amazon’s headquarters campus in January 2021, offering merchandise ranging from clothing, knick knacks and trinkets emblazoned with the iconic Sub Pop logo to vinyl records.
The sticker-plastered front of the shop stood out in the Denny Triangle neighborhood of steel and glass high rises, across the street from the Spheres and the first Amazon Go location.
Opening during the pandemic was a retail anomaly, especially in the building of an e-commerce giant. Amazon reshaped a city which in many ways was put on the map by Sub Pop and the grunge music movement, fueled by bands on the label such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney and others.
The label was founded in 1988 by Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt, six years before Jeff Bezos started his online bookseller in a Bellevue, Wash., garage.