Amazon Style, Amazon’s First Steps in Offline Retail
February 2 , 2022
Amazon recently opened their plans to launch their first offline fashion retail store, Amazon Style in later this year. The store, to open Glendale, California, is expected to be around 30,000ft2. While not much impressive in size compared to an average department store, consumers will have a large product range, from $10 basic items to designer jeans that can cost up to $ 400
This is not the first time Amazon has moved offline. Amazon first opened an offline bookstore in 2015, and transported their online system (e.g. Amazon ratings and reviews) to the stores. They even took payments through the amazon app. Amazon also has a history in M&A in US organic grocery chain, Whole Foods for $13.7 Billion in 2017. Moreover, the e-commerce giant has put in great effort in expanding offline their best-selling products on Amazon Go.
Nevertheless, Amazon’s steps raise eyebrows, that the biggest apparel retailer since their launch in 2002, is moving to an offline setting. Contrary to what many may believe, offline shopping still makes up for 85% of apparel shopping in the US. Consumers have a need to have a more hands-on approach, seeing and feeling the fabric in person. Another obstacle is discovering new brands online.
Amazon Style director Simoina Vasen stated in a recent interview “consumers enjoy combining on and offline shopping and is the same for the fashion category. There are a wide range of great designers and brands. Yet, the challenge is to discover them”.
Amazon has long time focusing their pie in the apparel market to help with their offline launch. According to the Wells Fargo report published last March, Amazon has over thrown Walmart and has become the biggest apparel retailer in America. This also indicates 15% of increase in sales, amounting up to $41 billion increase in apparel sales.
The ambitious Amazon Style launch is centered around Amazon’s goals to maximize consumer shopping experience. Amazon Style is a one-stop app shopping experience. Only one size of the products are on display and consumers simply have to scan the tagged QR code to see more specific product details. After selecting a product and size, customers can simply press the “Try On” button to be led to a virtual line on the app. In a sense, Amazon Style is working as a curator for customers.
All the selected items, are on display on the so called “Magic Wardrobe”, prepared beforehand by staff. There is also a touchscreen in the changing room where the AI presents similar recommendations based on the scanned items as well as taking reviews from clients.
If a user wishes to try on additional styles, they can do so at a touch of a button on the screen where the request would be delivered to staff and delivered to the “magic Wardrobe”, allowing the consumer to try on multiple items without leaving the changing room.
Amazon possesses professionality in connecting successful corporations to all areas including e-commerce, cloud computing, content streaming, smart devices, and high-tech retail. The same could be said for Amazon Style. The Network continuously updates to process an enormous number of orders and allows consumers to discover new items each visit. By presenting a new shopping experience and allowing consumers to purchase at the same rate on and offline, Amazon Style has recreated the “shopping instore”. It has created an omnichannel, removing the distinction between on & offline in addition to using consumer bigdata for personalize shopping, shedding light on what the future of retail stores can look like through Amazon Style.
