After less than two years, Amazon has closed their two Amazon Style stores, located in Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio. The move comes on the heels of Amazon moving away from many of their brick-and-mortar stores, like Amazon Go and Amazon Books.
The first Amazon Style store opened in Los Angeles in May 2022, and the second in Columbus, Ohio, in October 2022. At these stores, customers could request clothes from Amazon.com to try on in-store, with price matching to the app or website. Instead of taking clothes to the dressing room, shoppers scanned QR codes where their choices would appear in 44 fitting rooms, and use the app for easy check-out. Returns for Amazon apparel purchases, whether made in-store or online, were accepted at Amazon Style locations.
The technologically unmatched clothing stores shut down as of Nov. 9. 2023. So now what? We’ll tell you what happened, and what Amazon is going to do next when it comes to apparel sales.
Amazon has closed their Style stores to focus on their online apparel sales.
Apparently the almost magical, tech-driven clothing store was taking time and energy away from Amazon’s online apparel sales. Although Amazon didn’t cite any sales data when making the closure announcement, Amazon spokesperson Kristen Kish said that the company wants to “focus on our online fashion shopping experience, where we’re offering new, exciting selection at great value and introducing innovative technology to meet the needs of every customer.”
With Try Before You Buy, you can still make informed clothing purchases on Amazon — from home.
Although the Amazon Style stores are going away, Amazon says they’re planning to focus on improving the online shopping experience for clothing. We’ve already spent some time diving into Amazon’s “Try Before You Buy” — formerly known as Amazon Wardrobe.
You’ll want to check out that article, but basically, Try Before You Buy is Amazon’s version of a fitting room. You can try on an article of clothing for a week before you are charged for it. It’s one of the many Prime membership benefits, and is totally cost-free to you if you return the clothes on time.
Amazon is, however, planning to open more grocery stores.
Although other physical stores have disappeared in recent years, Amazon said they’re focusing on developing and growing their grocery stores, which include:
- Whole Foods Market: 527 stores
- Amazon Fresh: 44 stores in the U.S.
Amazon has closed all their Amazon Books stores to focus on other markets.
Amazon closed all of the Amazon Books, Amazon 4-Star and pop-up locations in the US and UK in Spring 2022. These locations sold books and various top-rated Amazon products, but turned out to be a mismatch for the online retailer.
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