Amazon’s Fashion Faux Pas
Adam Shilton
Last week London played host to Amazon’s latest venture into bricks and mortar with the opening of a week long pop-up on Baker Street. Open between 23 – 27 October, the fashion focussed store was the first of its kind in Europe and the latest example of the brand flexing its muscles in the physical retail world.
The store offered Londoners an edited range of women’s and men’s apparel with the assortment rotating throughout the pop-ups duration alongside a calendar of talks and events. Autumn/winter ‘18 trends were the focus of the first two days, with fitness taking centre stage on the third followed by street and party wear throughout the final few days. Events included yoga sessions with Ella Mills founder of Deliciously Ella, panel discussions hosted by Vogue and product customisation with Pepe Jeans in addition to a host of DJ’s and acoustic music sets.
As one might expect, the store also featured a digital component in the form of Amazon’s braded QR code technology ‘SmileCode’ which allowed customers to purchase products either online or in-store simply by scanning coded tags with their phones via the Amazon mobile app. Conspicuously though, the store lacked any additional meaningful digital clout, which seemed a distinct oversight given the innovative real-world tech of some of its predecessors. Compared to the likes of Amazon 4-Star and Amazon Go (discussed in my previous article, The Digital Feedback Loop) this latest Amazon store could be considered practically archaic. Notably, even last year’s Amazon / Calvin Klein Christmas pop-up collaboration in New York City had Echo speakers in its fitting rooms which allowed customers to select music or control light settings. Plus given Amazon’s next generation ‘Echo Look’ is being billed as a personal ‘style assistant’, inclusion of at least some of the Echo’s functionality would have positioned the pop-up lightyears ahead of its legacy bricks and mortar peers. For a brand so pioneering and disruptive in its application of smart technology, incorporating so little in the way of meaningful digital experience seems a missed opportunity to engage with expectant new customers
Similarly, while the might of Amazon’s growing own-brand portfolio should by no means be underestimated (the store stocked Amazon’s Truth & Fable, FIND and Meraki brands alongside Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Levi’s and Puma), the frequency with which the product offering changed combined with the pop-up’s limited life span meant the assortment looked confused rather than curated, thereby missing the target of any particular consumer group. While there’s no denying that the immediacy of fashion’s ‘see now, buy now’ and ‘drop’ culture are becoming the norm, this lack of focus could again be seen as an opportunity missed.
Described by Amazon as a “big learning experience for us to understand how Amazon fashion translates into physical retail” this store was clearly a milestone for a brand keen to take the next step towards repositioning itself as a serious fashion contender, rather than a commodity driven retailer known for cut-price clothing and repeat purchases. Yet despite the lofty aspiration, this “learning experience” approach appeared to focus more on post-delivery insight gathering than the creation of a truly remarkable future-proofed fashion retail experience. While Amazon’s appetite to further permeate the physical retail world should not be underestimated this latest bricks and mortar expression points to an online brand that’s not always entirely sure of its place in the real world.