Amazon Pushes Forward Into Apparel Retail with ‘Style’ Expansion

• Amazon opened its second-ever clothing store in Columbus, Ohio.
• The Amazon Style store has 36 dressing rooms and customers can request new sizes and styles directly from the dressing room.
• The new Amazon Style store comes the same year the retailer shut down entirely its Amazon Books, Amazon 4-Star and Amazon Pop Up formats.

Amazon this week opened a new Amazon Style location in Columbus, Ohio, the e-commerce giant’s second-ever apparel retail store and its first in the Midwest. 

The store, located in Easton Town Center, opened Oct. 18 and is the second Style location for the e-commerce retailer, which opened its first Style store in Los Angeles earlier this year, Amazon told Retail Leader. Like Amazon’s other brick-and-mortar concepts, the Amazon Style store integrates Amazon technology into the shopping experience. 

According to a report from The Columbus Dispatch, the new store is 28,000 square feet and occupies the space of a former Forever 21 store. The new location employs 100 part-time and full-time workers.

Customers can scan QR codes on clothing items using Amazon’s app to send them to fitting rooms or directly to the front of the store for purchase. Amazon staff will bring the items to the fitting room in addition to other items the employees think the customer may also be interested in, according to Amazon. According to the Dispatch, the store features lookbooks curated by Amazon’s stylists. Just one of each clothing item is on display with sizing options in the back of the store that customers can select via the app. 

Products sold at Amazon Style come from various brands, including Calvin Klein, Lacoste, Levi’s, Dolce Vita Vince, Equipment, Theory and Velvet by Graham & Spencer, Amazon said.

The new store has 36 fitting rooms, each equipped with digital screens that allow customers to continue shopping from inside, the report said. Shoppers can select new items or request different sizes without ever leaving the fitting room. If a customer decides against purchasing an item, it will be saved in their Amazon app so they can purchase it later.

Shoppers can pay for items using Amazon One technology, which associates a customer’s credit card information with a customer’s palm. The retailer uses the same technology at some of its other physical stores, including its grocery brands Amazon Go, Amazon Fresh, and Whole Foods Market.

The secondAmazon Style store comes the same year the retailer shut down entirely its Amazon Books, Amazon 4-Star and Amazon Pop Up formats (66 locations in the U.S.). The decision to close the concepts came as Amazon’s physical retail locations lagged behind its primary e-commerce business, with sales at stores lower in 2021 than in 2018, according to a CNBC report.

Additionally, Amazon has opened more than a dozen Amazon Fresh locations this year, bringing its total to 44 physical grocery stores in the U.S.