Amazon continues its fashion expansion

American online retailer Amazon struggled for years to get a breakthrough in fashion, but it seems to have made strides in the sector lately. One of the reasons for that improvement is Amazon’s promise to not only sell the clothing at a lower price.

Altered the online presentation

For years, Amazon fought its competition with lower prices for pretty much every product. However, that strategy does not seem to work in the fashion industry, so Amazon had to come up with another plan.

“Amazon understands fashion is different from its core business,” said Joëlle Grünberg, the North American CEO of Lacoste, in a Wall Street Journal article. “They discount when products aren’t selling, but they don’t mark down at crazy rates.” Amazon also completely altered how it presented clothing online. Ever since 2013, Amazon has its own photo studio in the United States, where it has shoots for fashion items.

Its own clothing brands

Many brands sell directly on Amazon, but companies like Nike have shown to be reticent. The online giant has already said it will design collections itself to fill holes in its product range. However, the fashion companies that have not joined Amazon’s online tale refer to third party sellers on Amazon and those can easily sell their products cheaply on the online platform.

The surge in clothing sales on Amazon is bad news for the traditional retailer as fashion has been their final frontier. Forrester Research found that only 15 % of the fashion industry’s turnover comes from online sources. By comparison: computers had a 65 % online market share.