Amazon is turning>Mixing retail and e-tail
Amazon's website offers countless items made by countless different fashion brands. The new storefront will have to pick and choose its inventory more sparingly.
According to the company's announcement, the store will focus>Go big or go online
The decision to launch Amazon Style makes at least some sense: Amazon is the largest clothing retailer in America according to Wells Fargo research, but in-store purchases still make up more than 85% of the country's total retail sales, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
However, not all of Amazon's brick-and-mortar projects have been successful.
Amazon Style's first storefront is set to open in The Americana at Brand mall in Los Angeles sometime in 2022.Amazon
The e-commerce giant used to have dozens of pop-up stores selling Amazon-branded products and services, like Kindle e-readers and Prime Video memberships, located within malls, Kohls' stores and Whole Foods locations across the country.
In 2019, the company shuttered the experiment, closing all 87 of its U.S. locations at the time, telling CNBC that it was "instead expanding Amazon Books and Amazon 4-star" to "provide more comprehensive customer experience and broader selection."
Amazon Style will offer a varying array of "women's and men's apparel, shoes, and accessories" selected by "fashion curators and feedback provided by millions of customers," the company says.Amazon
But even doubling down on those standalone brick-and-mortar stores hasn't helped Amazon's physical locations reach the unparalleled financial success of Amazon.com.
In 2021, the company made more than $222 billion in online net sales, while its physical storefronts — 679 of them, including Whole Foods and Amazon Go stores — only earned roughly $17 billion, according to Amazon's end-of-year filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Still, in-person retail is currently the country's hot trend: More U.S. stores opened than closed in 2021 for the first time in five years, according tracking by Coresight Research. Amazon could be poised for a similar rebound, with its annual sales in physical stores rising 5.23% in 2021, after dropping nearly 6% in 2020.
