A recent article brought up the topic of Amazon opening its own chain of outlet stores - mostly to deal with all the returns sitting in its own and third-party warehouses. Forever, traditional retailers have sold unsold marked-down inventory to off-price retailers for pennies on the dollar.

I don't think Amazon will do it. But if they did, here's how it might work.

• Amazon likely only needs to sell-through 25%+ of any inventory to cover its costs, as long as it can operate the stores cheaply enough.

• Amazon could justify the costs of these stores on the back of rural Amazon Prime membership signups alone.

• Amazon could make the program self-funding. Start with tent sales; only establish physical retail when the payback is there.

• You won't see them in any urban areas. Only rural ones where you might see outlet stores today.

• I don't think you would see hundreds of these. It would be a targeted initiative to solve a particular problem. Big bets particularly to solve a problem "no one cares about."

• Likely this is competing with other ideas internally at Amazon designed to raise its corporate standing - like finding willing takers of the merchandise somewhere around the world.

School kids, who need returned Amazon Echo alarm clocks?