Strike the Amazon pose. That's Jeff Bezos and company getting ready to rock and rule the upscale fashion world.
According to a report from The New York Times, Amazon.com is doing what it always does when it wants to become a driving force in any category in which it competes — "go big and spare no expense."
While Amazon has had some success in fashion with Zappos.com, Endless.com, MyHabit.com and Shopbop, it has yet to achieve the level of dominance that it has in other product categories it has targeted.
MyHabit (Amazon's response to daily deal sites) has received rave reviews for quality of goods and execution. Amy Odell, writing on BuzzFeed, offered this assessment: "Using patent-pending technology, they shoot 3,000 images a day at a photo studio in Kentucky. As an avid online shopper myself, I'd say the results are well worth it: instead of a static model you see a girl moving in the clothes, elevating what could be a flat image into something that instantly tells you a lot more about whatever item you might buy than many online shopping sites do in a single click."
In a RetailWire poll last May, 88 percent of respondents said MyHabit would be somewhat or very successful for Amazon.
According to the Times, Mr. Bezos has said that Amazon already makes money on the fashion items it sells and the addition of higher profit, less price-sensitive lines of clothing is worth pursuing.
Designers, the argument goes, see an upside to dealing with Amazon. It is willing to place larger orders than many other retailers. Amazon also doesn't ask, at least not yet, for markdowns or to return items that do not sell.
Amazon has also pledged to refrain from the aggressive price cutting it has followed in other categories to gain market share.
"There's a sophisticated markdown cadence in the fashion industry that we think makes sense and we're basically following that established approach," Mr. Bezos told the Times.