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Outside Amazon’s first in-person clothing store in California, Diemmi Le, 22, summed up her experience: “You don’t have to talk to anyone.”

For years, Amazon has tried, and ultimately failed, to translate its online book business into successful bookstores. Dozens of stores closed this spring. Now, the online shopping giant is trying again, this time trying to reinvent the mall clothing store.

During the pandemic, Amazon overtook Walmart to become the number one clothing retailer in the United States, Wells Fargo analysts concluded last year. The company is billing its new store as an ambitious fusion of its online shopping algorithm with an in-person shopping experience.

The first Amazon Style store, which opened in May in Glendale, California, a Los Angeles suburb, allows customers to use a smartphone app to send clothes directly to fitting rooms, rather than carrying them around, and offers additional clothing recommendations from the company’s algorithms.

Wrapped in company lanyards, employees at the front of the store greet customers and offer help navigating the smartphone app and the store’s free Wi-Fi and phone chargers. And there are many other Amazon employees working behind the scenes, quickly delivering new outfits to the “magic closet” in each dressing room.

But the store is designed to make much of its staff invisible: customers can use a locker room touchscreen to conjure up a different size pair of pants, or a different color T-shirt, without having to see or talk to another being. human.

“It’s something new, something you’ve never seen before. It’s an experience rather than a regular shop, ”said Marshall Sanders, 28.

‘Hi-tech’, but limited

In person, Amazon Style looks a bit like someone in the 90s could have imagined what “hi-tech” shopping would be like in 2020.

The store features a mix of well-known and even high-end brands, such as Levi’s, Vince, and Theory, with the darker brands and inexpensive in-house clothing lines that Amazon customers are used to finding on the website. Read also : Bill Schubart: Will artificial intelligence improve life or just make business more profitable?. There are shelves of $ 200 or $ 300 blouses in a “premium” section, but more shelves of cheap shirts with trendy prints and sack floral dresses.

Scan a Rebecca Taylor Summer Floral Dress, offered at the discounted price of $ 276.50, and under “Related Items,” Amazon’s shopping app may recommend a similar color floral dress for $ 41.25.

Several customers shopping at Glendale’s store said that the retail store selection was limited and was not up to par with Amazon’s online marketplace shopping experience.

Dana Roo and Diana Guerrero, both 25, had come from the west side of Los Angeles and San Diego specifically to check out the new Amazon store, but were disappointed with the lack of bargains they enjoy online. For them, Amazon was a place to find good “tricks” of high-end clothing, like Ugg’s fuzzy living room sets, Roo said. The brick and mortar shop only offered original sets.

The store’s clothing options are organized thematically, in sections with names like “rustic grace”, “feminine strength”, “Y2k” and, more pragmatically, “night tops under $ 35”. The app sends an alert when the locker room is ready and the phone opens the locker room door.

The changing rooms are bright and clean, with a glowing stripe around the mirror and a message welcoming them by name on a touchscreen. The screen displays details on customer-selected outfits, as well as a list of new clothing choices, including recommendations for matching tops, shoes and bags to “finish the look”.

Scrolling through clothing options on a touch screen is an out-of-Clueless experience, though it remains to be seen whether Amazon’s algorithm will create Cher-inspired looks.

Amazon Style’s main gimmick is what one business manager called the “magic closet” in the dressing rooms. Close the empty closet door, press a few buttons on the touchscreen and wait. A light will glow red, there will be rustling in the closet and then a sudden flash of light around the door – open it, and the required clothes are there.

Amazon makes sure to keep workers filling its new magic closets out of sight – the locks on the “closet” doors on the dressing room side when employees are working in the closet, for the privacy of shoppers, according to a sign. in the locker room. The door on the back of the closet, on the employee side, is also locked from the inside.

Amazon says its rapid delivery of clothing is made possible thanks to “advanced technologies and processes used in Amazon’s fulfillment centers,” which have also made headlines for years for grueling working conditions and high injury rates. So far, Amazon hasn’t allowed the public to see what’s going on in the rooms on the other side of its “magic closets”.

An Amazon press spokesperson declined a request for a behind-the-scenes tour. When asked about Amazon Style’s behind-the-scenes working conditions, the company advertised what it called its competitive pay and good perks, and said the store’s employees have a chance to try out different roles within the store.

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The human element

When Amazon announced its new clothing store concept in January, ahead of the store’s official launch, some critics saw it as an attempt to make human sellers obsolete. On the same subject : Is Minions: The Rise of Gru on Amazon?.

Many large clothing stores are understaffed and their employees were too skinny to provide much personal advice, Rachel Kraus wrote in Mashable, which meant Amazon’s algorithmic shopping might be a better option for some customers. At the same time, Kraus said, “I’m not sure an app that tells me I’ll look great in this top would give me that confidence boost that’s all part of the fun of shopping in person.”

In a statement, Amazon said its front-of-store employees, who provide customers with human advice and assistance, have been essential to the Amazon Style experience and will continue to be a part of the store’s operations, even as customers they got used to using the shopping app.

The Glendale store currently employs hundreds of people, many with previous experience in the apparel industry, Amazon said. Because employees at the front of the store didn’t have to waste time stocking bounties on the floor, he suggested, employees would have more time to interact with customers and provide advice.

Customers browsing the new store in California this month praised the friendly front-of-store employees, though many were divided as to whether they liked the overall concept – some said they found it “really interesting.” “and innovative, others the experience was overwhelming and some said the in-store clothing selection was underwhelming compared to what they could find online.

Sanders, the 28-year-old, hadn’t been a big Amazon buyer before, but said he was going to encourage his friends to try the store.

Inside his dressing room, Amazon’s algorithm offered Sanders similar items to the ones he had already chosen – “two things expensive and two things cheaper” – and he ended up buying one, he said, without even realizing. to have done so.

She told her she liked the “antisocial” aspect of the store, but she wasn’t a huge fan of Amazon’s quality clothing. And he saw deeper problems: the store’s “cool concept” was also “classy” and “causes a lot of inequality”, since people without smartphones would not be able to shop.

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