Early last year, Amazon took on Zara, H&M and company in earnest with its first real clothing store. Eleven months after the launch of Amazon Style, only two stores are open. The first is in Glendale, California, while the second is in Columbus, Ohio.
After a year, what is the balance sheet? What do consumers think? Roger Cheng, an American journalist from CNET, took a short tour of the Californian store and shares his feelings with us. Is the future of clothing shopping in Amazon’s hands?
With Amazon, shopping for clothes has never been so cool
Buying clothes is often considered a pain. If you go to the store, it’s overwhelming. There are (too) many people, we scour the shelves in the hope of finding what we are looking for, going through the fitting room is rarely a pleasure… In short, it’s a nightmare for many people .
Thus, one would think that e-commerce would solve these problems. Wrongly. Indeed, online stores do not solve everything. If buying online makes sense for some products, it’s different for clothes.
From one brand to another, from one model to another, the garment will suit you. Or will not suit you at all. Shopping for clothes is therefore a bit of a lottery at times. We have to bet on the size and cross our fingers that it suits us. At the risk, otherwise, of having to send the T-shirt or pants back to the brand. Which is always constraining.
Therefore, shopping online or in a physical store, neither of these solutions is really perfect and you have to be ready to make some compromises. Faced with this problem, Amazon arrives with Style.
A unique cabin experience
According to Roger Cheng, the shopping experience is disrupted. Especially on the side of the fitting rooms. Indeed, you have to use the application to scan the items you want to try and ask “go to the cabin”. The employees then rush to gather the clothes you want to put on and prepare your fitting room. Afterwards, the application informs you that your cabin is ready. You can even unlock it with your smartphone.
In addition to the clothes you want to try on, Amazon slips in other products that you might like. There’s even the actual version of a sponsored garment. For Roger Cheng, he found a Calvin Klein T-shirt on his pile of clothes to try on. Strange, but why not.
Amazon Style doesn’t just meet you in an empty, monotonous room to try on your clothes. We find, thus, a large touch screen. Selections and recommendations are displayed there. Even better ? You can directly ask the employees for another size if you miscalculated your shot. Casually, it’s ingenious since it saves us a sometimes embarrassing moment.
Similarly, the employee does not knock on the cabin door to give you the new product, this time in the right size. The latter is found directly in the closet of the fitting room. As if by magic ! The system is quite interesting. In reality, a red light comes on and the closet door locks. This allows the employee to drop off your new clothes there. Once the door is closed on its side, the red light goes out and you can open the cupboard from the cabin. What if this was the future of shopping?
It remains to be seen what plans Amazon has for Style. Indeed, only two stores have opened since the launch of this concept. For the moment, the firm of Jeff Bezos has not revealed its plans for the future. If the success of Amazon Style is there, it’s a safe bet that shops are springing up here in Europe. That’s what we hope.
