Would you buy fashion from Amazon?
The e-tail giant is a one-stop shop for busy lives – and now it’s after your wardrobe, says Charlie Gowans-eglinton
What was the last thing you bought from Amazon? Toothpaste, a USB cable, an e-book? When the e-tailer launched its unlimited one day delivery service membership, Amazon Prime, back in 2007, it caused a shift in customer habits: instead of shopping online for non-urgent gifts, electronics and household goods, shoppers began frequenting Amazon as they once had the supermarket or department store – for every little thing, as and when they needed it, all delivered the next day in a brown cardboard parcel.
Now, that same corrugated card comes bearing one of Amazon’s latest offerings: fashion. Today sees the launch of Truth & Fable, an occasionwear-focused brand designed by an in-house team. It comes hot on the heels of newly launched lingerie line Iris &
Lilly and everyday fashion label Find. The latter, launched in September, has proved – perhaps surprisingly – popular with fashion press: Lisa Armstrong, The Telegraph’s head of fashion and style, owns the £61 trench coat, and their blazers and everyday dresses are strong sellers.
Truth & Fable is slightly pricier – you can get a jumpsuit for £60, but the embroidered dresses are priced up at £135 (sizes six to 18). At those prices, they’re inviting comparisons with Whistles, Kitri, Rixo, Ganni in the event dressing market, and attempting to undercut Needle & Thread and Self Portrait. But will it work?
While buying a party frock with your loo roll might be proven practice in supermarkets, customers that come for loo roll will physically walk past those clothes – the same can’t be said for someone shopping via Amazon. And at these prices, will the sheer volume of other products on offer put shoppers off ?
“I don’t think we’re trying to move away from Amazon,” says Frances Russell, vice-president of private brands at Amazon Fashion, who joined in 2016 from Marks & Spencer. “We are Amazon, and we embrace that ability to be able to buy your deodorant with your dress – but obviously we want to make the product look as aspirational and inviting as possible. And you want different cues when you’re buying a dress to when you’re buying toothpaste.”
To that end, the site itself is a potential sticking point. While each brand does have its own specially designed landing page, those infinite grids of product you’d find on the main site are still core to design that’s functional, but definitely not sexy. You can’t touch or try virtually – something Amazon has attempted to offset with video clips of the clothes on models. Fabric has been a priority too – from the perspective of quality and washability. Still, the customer experience is quick and easy rather than “special” – but Amazon isn’t trying to launch the next Net-a-porter – or at least not yet. “I think that we are always dissatisfied with how the site looks. You could get a room full of 1,000 people – some like certain parts of it, some don’t like others. We’re always looking to improve,” says Russell. This isn’t Amazon’s first attempt to break into the fashion market. Though it had sold clothes before, a drive to become a fashion destination began in earnest in 2012 – and while designer brands were initially reluctant to have their products sold on a marketplace site, large orders – often for designers’ whole seasonal collections – swung the pendulum in Amazon’s favour. Off-site, the e-tailer has been steadily working to build a fashion profile – sponsoring fashion weeks in Tokyo and New Delhi, and co-sponsoring the 2012 Met Gala (the highest-profile event on the fashion calendar). Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO, once said the brand’s “target market is everyone who wears clothes”.
Selling recognisable brands like LK Bennett, Levi’s or Adidas online is one thing – persuading customers to buy an unknown label is another. With such a broad customer base, Amazon runs the risk of trying to appeal to every woman – and in doing so, appealing to none. “We look at what the data’s telling us,” says Russell, who admits to spending hours reading customer reviews online “and we can pivot. It’s so early – we have assumptions and we test them and we change… let the customer tell you, rather than trying to predict the future.” Amazon’s no bells and whistles, tech-first approach is perhaps most easily compared to ASOS, which overtook M&S in market value at the end of last year (£4.89billion compared with £4.88 billion). While luxury designer e-boutiques like Matches Fashion and Net-a-porter send out orders in smart boxes, ASOS deliveries come in plastic envelopes – as with Amazon’s cardboard, it’s an economy that allows them to keep prices low. The lack of physical stores is the other very large economy. In January, M&S announced the closure of six UK branches, with another eight in the firing line; New Look’s potential store closures total 60, and Debenhams is reported to be considering closing some stores. At the other end of the spectrum, digital-only brands Kitri (in the fashion corner) and Glossier (beauty) have turned to pop-up spaces to allow customers to touch, feel and try before they buy, and while 95 per cent of Matches Fashion’s sales are digital, they’ve just invested in a new London town house – proving that while customers may buy online, physical interaction can be crucial to developing trust. For now, Russell’s focus is digital-only but, “never say never”.
The sheer scale of Amazon – and the amount of product it shifts – might be a hindrance in establishing a credible fashion brand that women want to wear. But that scale is also its biggest asset: while other stores struggle to get shoppers through the doors, Amazon has a 24/7 virtual stream. Whether they’re coming for the fashion remains to be seen.