Amazon Expands Data-Driven Fashion Push

While apparel sales have been uneven in 2020, as consumers have shown a greater preference for comfy loungewear to haute couture, Amazon’s battle to enter and drive the segment has continued apace.

At the end of Q3, Amazon was closing in on $30 billion in gross apparel and footwear sales and within range of finally passing long-time market leader Walmart. A fact buttressed by near control of the eCommerce segment of the category in a year when everything has been highly digital. More than buttressed by the COVID-19 spike in web traffic that has driven digital sales across the board — Amazon has brought bigger names in fashion onto its platform with brands such as Oscar  De La Renta, Chico’s FAS — parent firm of brands like  Chico’s, White House Black Market and Soma.

And beyond the big names, Amazon’s own private labels are the fourth most purchased brand in terms of clothing and footwear on Amazon, “with only Nike, Under Armour and Hanes ranking higher,” according to SunTrust analyst Youssef Squali. Currently, Amazon is forecast to bring in $7.5 billion in private label sales this year.

And as of today (Dec. 15), Amazon is making its next big fashion move with a big personalization play with the launch of its latest offering — Made For You.

As the name implies, Made for You, is designed to allow consumers to truly customize their wardrobe by creating T-shirts to their exact measurements. Instead of a scanned measure, Amazon Fashion’s Made for You requires users to provide their height, weight, body style and two photos of themselves to create the shirt.

Apart from customizing the size, consumers can also choose from eight colors and preferred sleeve and shirt lengths, necklines and fabrics, and the desired fit. The shirts can even include your name printed on the label, as a small perk. When finished, customers can view the product they customized on a virtual body double before placing the order. The experience works on the web and inside the Amazon app and comes with a $25 price tag.

Custom clothing, of course, is far from a new idea, though generally, it applied to high-end, high-cost fashion items as opposed to the staple of casual wear that is the T-shirt. But if a firm were looking to collect a lot of customer fit data for their fashion business, T-Shirts are a pretty obvious place to start since they’re inexpensive enough to be highly accessible to consumers.

According to Amazon, the long-term goal is to fix the size and fit in fashion and as such if Made For You works out, the hope is to expand Made for You with more styles and selections based on customer feedback. And, Amazon notes it is protecting consumer privacy while scooping up all that fit data— which they confirm will be securely stored and can be deleted by customers at any time. Uploaded photos, additionally, are not saved and are deleted immediately after use.

Whether Amazon’s future efforts as it enters the fashion arena will directly impact privacy concerns remains an open question. According to recent reports, Amazon has recently filed a patent for a series of what are described as “sniffer algorithms” designed specifically to listen to user voice content to identity certain trigger words and phrases that might designate specific consumer interest. An example of the technology offered by Amazon in the patent filing itself: “A user mentions a desire to travel to Paris while on a call, a recommendation for a book about Paris or an advertisement for a travel site might be presented at the end of the call.”

Other examples offered, a consumer who mentions plans to go out to eat or a desire for a certain type of food might be prompted to make a reservation at the end of the call or have an offer or coupon sent to them relating to their conversation.

Useful?  Potentially very, and yet another example of voice evolving consistently toward becoming a consumer’s commerce concierge. Done right, it could certainly be an asset to Amazon’s fashion business — as the consumer complaining within voice range about being unable to find a pair of jeans that fits or a decent set of running shoes is certainly someone in the market for some curated access to apparel that Amazon might be able to offer them.