After barely seventeen months, Amazon is already closing its two brick-and-mortar fashion shops. The retailer is shifting the focus for fashion entirely to online, but says it still believes in physical food shops.
High-tech shops
On 9 November, the only two Amazon Style fashion shops will close their doors. “After careful consideration, we have decided to close our two Amazon Style physical retail stores to focus on our online fashion shopping experience, where we are offering new, exciting selection at great value and introducing innovative technology to meet the needs of every customer”, Amazon spokesperson Kristen Kish confirmed to Bloomberg News.
Amazon opened a first fashion store in May 2022 in Glendale near Los Angeles, a second followed in October in Columbus, Ohio. At the high-tech shops, customers could use the app to choose the model, colour and size of the pieces they wanted to try on. Shoppers could also get personalised style advice there. However, this innovative customer experience has not led to any real disruption in the fashion world.
Cashless technology
Last year, Amazon had already closed all 68 physical shops of its “Amazon Books”, “Amazon 4-Star” and Pop-Up brands. That does not mean the company is giving up physical retail altogether: supermarkets remain important to the retailer, who operates more than 500 Whole Foods Market shops in the United States, in addition to 44 cashless Amazon Fresh and 24 Amazon Go outlets. Amazon also has physical shops in London.
Yet the rollout of those supermarkets has not been smooth sailing either. Amazon was forced to close several Amazon Go convenience stores and introduced traditional cash registers in its Amazon Fresh supermarkets. The introduction of cheaper RFID technology should make operating the cashless concept cheaper.
