9 highlights from Amazon's first physical fashion retail store

Online shopping is great for instant gratification. But after the Covid-19 pandemic and incessant online shopping, a lot of people are also pouring into malls for in-store experiences. Amazon, an online shopping giant, whose wealth more than tripled during the pandemic, is jumping on the physical shopping bandwagon too.

Amazon has opened up its first-ever physical fashion retail store in California, USA, and it is called Amazon Style. The brick-and-mortar store is unlike any other fashion retail outlet.

The USP of the store? “Amazon Style uses innovative technology to help you find looks you’ll love at the same great prices as on Amazon.com,” stated the store's description at Amazon’s website.

What will be the tech experience in the store? Unlike other stores where you go in, browse a dress and pick a few up for trial; the shopping experience at Amazon Style will be assisted by technology.

According to Amazon, Amazon Style will be less cluttered and more about browsing through looks.

1. Customers at Amazon Style will look at the displays.
2. If they like something, there is a QR code scanner next to the outfit, which will take them to the online store.
3. Customers can either keep the item away for later browsing, send it to the trial room, or send the item to checkout.
4. Sending an item for trial or checkout through the online store eliminates the hassle of digging for the right size.
5. Customers will also be notified of when a trial room is available.
6. All the favourited and try-on items will be sent to the designated trial room.
7. Customers can keep adding more items for trial without ever leaving the trial room .
8. The algorithm of Amazon will also offer personalized recommendations and Amazon deals that match them.
9. At the check out, customers don’t have the option of 'cashierless' or ‘Just Walk Out’ like those found in Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods. Customers have the option of paying through the controversial Amazon One Palm recognition service or by card.

Brands that you can find: Levi's, Tommy Hilfiger, Pavoi, CRZ Yoga and Champion are some of the brands you'll find in the store.

Amazon and its tryst with physical stores:

Amazon has come up with a few physical stores in the past few years. But they have been limited to the United States. Other than the Amazon-owned Whole Foods supermarket chain, the other physical retail stores are but a few.

Amazon in the past had opened up book stores, grocery and convenience stores such as Amazon Go, Amazon Fresh.

Amazon’s quest to blend tech with brick-and-mortar stores has not always been successful. When Amazon introduced entering their store by Amazon One Palm recognition service amidst the pandemic, not a lot of people were amused.

Not that there were Covid fears because the palm recognition is contactless, which means you just need to hover your hand above the scanner. But Amazon has a history of allegedly having sold biometric data of customers to the US government.

Other than the privacy and tech intrusive controversy of Amazon's One Palm, the company also tried to use tech in the fashion space and failed.

Amazon had come up with Echo Look once upon a time, that connected camera to combine human and machine intelligence to suggest outfits, colours and keep track of customers’ wardrobe. But it was discontinued.