Is Amazon���s Success as an Apparel Retailer Helping to Kill Bricks-and-Mortar Retail Clothes Stores?
Do you buy your clothes at Amazon?
Maybe not���or, at least, not yet���but the online retail giant has managed to successfully tap into the millennial (who else?) market, and is aggressively seeking to make a much broader impact as a clothing retailer. According to an article appearing over at Fox Business, Amazon introduced several private label brands last year that run the gamut from casual wear to dress clothes. According to the same report, Amazon is looking to go even further in 2017, with plans to expand into both ladies undergarments and active wear.
So, what about trying garments on before buying them? Isn���t that basically a requirement of clothes shopping?
You would think so, but, evidently, the inability to try on clothes and otherwise take advantage of the store atmosphere is not stopping millennials from buying their threads online���and it may not prove to be much of an impediment for any other demographic much longer. The fact is, even older folks, as much as they like doing things the ���old-fashioned way,��� seem to have placed their own premium on time and convenience, and thus find themselves increasingly content to shop from the ease of their kitchen tables, even at the risk of having to process the occasional mail return.
As a matter of fact, per the Fox Business article, analysis done by Cowen & Company indicates that sales of clothing and accessories at Amazon will increase a whopping 30 percent to $28 billion, while over at bricks-and-mortar giant Macy���s, sale are expected to dip this year by four percent, dropping to $22 billion. Assuming that happens, it will make Amazon the largest clothing retailer in the country, according to Geekwire.
Does this mean an inevitable, permanent decline of storefront clothing retailers?
���Decline��� is the key word here. Amazon almost singlehandedly changed the landscape of traditional books and consumer electronics retailing, and it may do the same thing in the retail clothing industry. However, just as bookstores and electronics stores did not entirely evaporate, neither will clothing stores���and one big advantage clothing retailers have is that need, for some, to try clothes on before they buy.
But will a decline from which traditional clothing retailers never fully rebound ensue? From the looks of things, it already has.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
