prime amazon the race to now By Melissa Anneccini
Why go grocery shopping when @amazon can deliver them right to my door? #primenow
I ordered a wifi router at 4:30 pm and it was here by 6. Incredible. #primenow
Neatly laid out on a white down duvet are three Greek yogurt containers, a pint of blueberries, a package of energy bars, four deviled eggs, a bottle of Perrier, and some almonds. A window into early 21st century eating practices, sure, but also a recent Twitter post that mentioned: #businesstravel, #hotelgroceries, #byebyeroomservice. Another traveler posts about being saved from an Airbnb rental that didn’t have a hairdryer. Still others comment that they are able to order gelato, scotch, Indian food, toilet paper, charcoal briquettes and cold medicine, all from the Internet’s largest bookstore. All delivered in an hour or less. Most of these entries include other qualifiers, like: #thefutureisnow, #disruption, #witchcraft. Witchcraft implies magic, but what the Amazon empire is being built on is pure strategic analysis. In major hubs, Amazon PrimeNow can provide nearly any commercial product to its customers wherever they may be, whether at home, at the office or on a date, in mere moments. This is the sort of on demand, needs-meeting that for most of human history only the most wealthy or powerful could expect. Amazon provides goods, certainly, but the true product is convenience and a kingly self-concept. Most of the products that make up PrimeNow orders are food, technology or household needs, which if it stayed that way, would make Amazon a great delivery service, not a disrupter. In order to implement total take-over, not only do serious product gaps need to be filled, they need to be stocked with Amazon merchandise. Private labeling is taking products or services, typically those manufactured by one company and offering them under another company’s brand. In the grocery industry, Heinz is a top ketchup brand. “Great Value,” Wal-Mart’s private label, also sells ketchup but at a discounted price. Imagine that Heinz won’t sell their ketchup through Amazon, but customers really want and need ketchup. Amazon could make their own ketchup and sell it under their own brand name in order to fill the gap in its stock. The company has already developed a private label brand called Amazon Basics, producing computer mice, USB cables, and other small electronic aids. Amazon ketchup could well be next. One giant gap in Amazon’s product assortment was described by a customer on Twitter as a failure to sort out its priorities—“Why,” asked the customer, “can I buy a turntable any time of the day or night, but not a suit in a wardrobe emergency?” The link between Amazon and fashion has proven to be less natural than with books, food or housewares. The bookselling industry is black and white because readers are loyal to authors or content areas, not publishers or retailers. In contrast, the fashion industry is bound by certain unavoidable factors such as brand loyalty, aesthetic, quality and fit. As challenging as these components will be to overcome, Amazon’s ambition is to take on
department store greats like Nordstrom, Saks and Bloomingdales along with mainstream mall favorites. With the goal of total market dominance, Amazon will leverage the strength of its new brand image and the addictive quality of PrimeNow, to launch Amazon Fashion Private Label. Appointing fashion powerhouse and Piperlime founder, Cathy Beaudoin, as president of Amazon Fashion was its first act of ruthlessness. Piperlime was an early online retailer of coveted items like high-end shoes and handbags. At its peak, 250 footwear and accessory brands like Frye, Marc by Marc Jacobs and Chloe were regularly stocked. Beaudoin pioneered celebrity and designer partnerships such as those with Rachel Zoe and Olivia Palermo. Among Beaudoin’s early observations was that Amazon’s predictive algorithms don’t work for fashion. Fashion consumers are fickle and difficult to pin down. If somebody likes Levi’s 501 jeans, it doesn’t mean that they will be equally taken with the very similar 510— worse yet, it doesn’t indicate that they will like any other denim brand on the market. Amazon must convince this very particular consumer that its fashion brand is just as trustworthy as a company like Levi’s in terms of fit, materials and, most importantly, style. By positioning the Amazon brand at top fashion events, Beaudoin is attempting to achieve this. From sponsoring the Met Gala, which is considered to be the industry’s premier red carpet event to New York Men’s Fashion week, Amazon Fashion is working to shake its “discount” identity. Partnering with Vogue and the CFDA on an “unscripted” reality television series about young designers, and mounting a large scale advertising campaign in New York City, both serve to place Amazon Fashion in the minds of consumers as a viable option for the purchase of wardrobe items. When they do visit the new Amazon Fashion page, they’ll find a vastly different aesthetic and navigational system than is found on the regular site. Beaudoin established a home base in Brooklyn, New York where 19,000 high quality images are being shot every day. The company believes that live models, instead of plastic mannequins used by most stores, allows for the best depiction of fit and silhouette. Discomfort. Irritation. Inconvenience. According to Amazon and its social media fan-base, these are problems of the past. If Amazon Fashion can win the approval of the fashion consumer as it continues to sell brands other than its own, its private label is poised to begin filling all remaining gaps. There has always been tremendous rivalry among fashion brands to be the first and the fastest to capture and deliver current trends before they are out of style. Amazon will be in direct competition with the same brands it carries. Its industry-shaking promise to those other brands is that they will have to start competing with “Now.”
No it isnt magic, but it sure comes close. #primenow
The future is offically here . . . in 2 hours or less. #primenow
52 | Marist Fashion
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