The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2023
Amazon opened a phone-controlled clothing store — it closed both locations in 18 months
Amazon Style let shoppers scan a QR code and have an app request their size to a fitting room; the format never expanded past its two original stores.
Amazon · 2023-11-09
What happened
Amazon opened its first Amazon Style apparel store in May 2022 at The Americana at Brand in Glendale, California, followed by a second at Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio, that October. The format let shoppers browse a single item on display, scan a QR code with the Amazon app, and have staff bring requested sizes and colors to a fitting room stocked automatically — an attempt to merge e-commerce-style personalization with a physical store.
Amazon never opened a third Amazon Style location. Both existing stores closed on November 9, 2023, less than 18 months after the first one opened. Amazon said it was ending the format to focus investment on its online fashion shopping experience instead.
The closures came alongside a broader retreat from Amazon's physical-retail experiments in the same period, as the company scaled back its bookstore and 4-star concept stores while continuing to expand its grocery formats.
Why it happened
- The store's core mechanic — browsing one displayed item and waiting for staff to fetch sizes to a fitting room — added friction that ordinary apparel retail doesn't have.
- Amazon rolled the format out to only two stores and never gathered enough scale to know whether the concept could work broadly before cutting it.
- The technology solved a problem (avoiding racks of stock on the floor) that most shoppers didn't experience as a problem worth working around.
- Amazon was simultaneously investing in grocery retail formats, and apparel lost the internal resourcing contest once results were unremarkable.
The lesson
A physical-retail format built around a gadget needs to beat plain browsing on convenience, not just look novel in a press photo.
Aftermath
Amazon closed both Amazon Style locations on November 9, 2023 and did not announce a replacement apparel-store concept. The company continued to invest in Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods physical formats while treating apparel as an online-only business.
Sources
- Amazon to close apparel stores in latest physical retail strategy shift — CNBC
- Amazon closing its 'Style' physical clothing stores, will continue investing in grocery — GeekWire
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