Retail Watchers

Amazon opened its first clothing store in Glendale, California at around 30,000 square feet and 2 shopping levels. Amazon Style uses touchscreens and QR codes. The app lets you request items such as clothing or shoes without having to leave the fitting room. You can also use the touchscreen to do the same.

You can scan QR codes to find out more about items and have items sent to the pickup counter. You don't even have to walk around the store.

You can literally wait in a fitting room and have an employee wait on you hand and foot. What a convenient free service. I wonder how many employees it takes to serve all of these customers? There are name brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and other higher end brands.

Fitting rooms are on the second level and employees have to use elevators to deliver goods to the Fitting rooms. You have reserve a room on the app and then wait until it is free.

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon- ... ode-2022-5

This was clearly in the works and signed off before the change of leadership on the retail side at Amazon. The wheels were coming off Amazon retail before the doors even opened on this concept. Good location to test in but I don't see it growing past that. It will be a data generator for a while but that is about it. One and done. I might be interested if I'm in the neighborhood and they decide to start handing out crazy coupons like the $20 off $40... Maybe buy one shirt. And the entire concept of waiting in a virtual queue for a fitting room sounds ridiculous especially when the pictures show at least 30 rooms?!! It's probably a false wait to make you browse the store. Just like the restaurants that do a false wait - I ate out last night and waited 15 minutes for a table only to be seated in a section that had at least 30 empty tables sitting and waiting. (At least the restaurants have a reason, they are running short staffed so by staggering seating, ordering etc. they can balance out the few employees they do have)

Despite their well oiled logistics, this does not really speak to Amazon's strengths. Buying apparel is a real art--too few parkas for an early cold snap and you miss sales. A warm winter and you're stick with excess stock. Year round, the wrong colors, styles, etc. and you're stuck with stuff that needs markdowns. They may be able to predict and stock utilitarian items, but it's more difficult to do that with higher margin merchandise. There's a reason that successful apparel sellers find a niche and cater to it. The department store model worked better when it was decentralized and buyers operated their departments like individual shops, except it's relatively expensive to have all those buyers. This is an area where Amazon is better off online and working through alliances with key retailers, much as they do with photography and other specialty areas.

I must be one of the only people who has never bought clothing from Amazon (just shoes).

storewanderer wrote: ↑May 30th, 2022, 11:42 am I must be one of the only people who has never bought clothing from Amazon (just shoes).

I've actually never bought shoes from Amazon (well, I guess I did but through zappos which Amazon owns). As far as clothing I've only purchased T-shirts from Amazon where size / style didn't matter very much.

Hopefully all states at least gets one location.