Amazon Will Let Customers Try On Clothes Before Buying
The service will be an option only for members of Amazon Prime, the company’s membership service, which, for
$99 a year, gives customers fast shipping at no extra charge, a streaming video service and other benefits.
On Tuesday morning, the company revealed a new program called Prime Wardrobe
that allows people to order clothing — from three to 15 items at a time — without actually buying it.
Prime Wardrobe will let customers try on more than a million items of clothing, accessories
and shoes from brands including Calvin Klein, Levi’s, Adidas, Hugo Boss and Lacoste without buying them.
By the end of this year, analysts expect that Amazon will become the largest apparel retailer in the United States,
at a time when many traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are closing stores or filing for bankruptcy.
The eyewear retailer Warby Parker has long let customers try on up to five pairs of
glasses at home for as long as five days, with no obligation to buy any of them.
It is hard to predict what impact this will have on the company’s clothing sales, but it follows a pattern at Amazon of eliminating so-called friction points to online shopping
that have made it surprisingly successful in the apparel category.