Amazon to launch its 1st physical fashion store. It’s called Amazon Style

A photo of Jeff Bezos went viral earlier this month.

In it, the Amazon founder is celebrating New Year’s Eve while wearing a disco-print silk shirt and sunglasses with heart-frames.

The photo op makes a bit more sense now on news that Amazon is…

… launching its 1st physical fashion store

It will be called 2 words that have never been used together before: Amazon Style. And the 1st location will open in LA later this year.

Here are some more details, per CNBC:

• Size: Around 30k square feet, which is “around the size of a typical T.J. Maxx location, but smaller than the average department store”
• Inventory: It will stock Amazon products as well as emerging brands catering to every price point

A new shopping experience

Amazon Style will only have “display items” in the store, with the rest of the merchandise held in the backroom. Customers scan a QR code for sizes, colors, reviews, and other product recommendations.

The fitting-room experience has also been remade: There is a touch screen in each room, and shoppers can have items sent to them.

Finally, checkout is facilitated by Amazon’s palm-scanning technology.

The latest in Amazon’s physical retail experimentation:

• 2015: It opened its 1st physical bookstore (Amazon Books) in Seattle
• 2017: It acquired Whole Foods for $13.7B
• 2018: It rolled out a number of no-cashier, self-checkout stores called Amazon Go
• 2020: It launched a chain of fresh grocery stores (you guessed it, Amazon Fresh)

Will Amazon Style work? In physical retail, many shoppers do enjoy the experience of looking through inventory and trying to find a hidden gem. The phenomenon — called “treasure hunting” — is virtually nonexistent in Amazon Style’s QR code model.

Whether or not the experiment works, Amazon is already America’s largest retailer with $41B+ in sales (passing Walmart). That’s a lot of disco shirts.