Amazon’s Prime Wardrobe is officially out of beta after being launched in June last year, according to Recode. However, one key incentive has been removed with the launch – Customer discounts.
When Prime Wardrobe was launched last summer, as an incentive to customers, discounts of 10 to 20 percent were given to customers who kept three or more items of clothing they tried. By November, Amazon had changed the discount incentives to a flat $20 on orders of at least $200 and $50 on orders of $400 or more.
Now, there are no discounts at all. Business Insider suggests this likely makes Prime Wardrobe less costly to operate because, without discounts, Amazon will ship less and makes bigger profits.
New heights in online shopping
Prime Wardrobe is supposed to be Amazon’s answer to increasingly popular personalized online shopping services like Stitch Fix and Trunk. These services allow customers to try on clothing and other items in the privacy of their homes, keeping what they like and returning the rest.
While companies like Stitch Fix and Trunk use customer data to personalize the online shopping experience – Amazon’s service is a more Do-it-yourself (DIY) experience. At the present time, there are no personal shopping assistants or stylists to assist the customer in choosing which items to try.
Try-before-you-buy
Here’s how Amazon’s TBYB Prime Wardrobe works – Customers are allowed to choose at least three and as many as eight items for their box. The selection of items does not include all of Amazon’s inventory. Instead, you have to visit the Prime Wardrobe section to fill your box.
Actually, the site focuses on Amazon’s in-house clothing brands, although there are many popular name-brands, like Tommy Hilfiger, Adidas, Guess, Levi’s, Calvin Klein, and many more.
The retailer says that during the beta period, customers ordered “thousands of styles,” from dresses, jeans, men’s clothing and even children’s shoes and clothing. They do note that their private label brands – Lark & Ro, Daily Ritual, Amazon Essentials, and Goodthreads have done very well.
It should be noted that there are no additional expenses per box or for access to the service, other than the customer has to be a Prime subscriber. A customer can’t order another Prime Wardrobe box until they have either purchased all the items in the previous box or their returned items have been received by Amazon.
Shipping will take from four to six days, and that can be a drawback. So ordering a party dress for the weekend on a Thursday may not be an option. Another drawback to trying on clothing at home being voiced by some people is not knowing how many times an article of clothing they receive has been tried on previously.
One person expressed their delight in using Amazon Prime and wrote they use Prime “on a weekly basis. It saves me a ton of driving trips to the store, and my all-in price is usually the same or cheaper, But that stops with clothes. I try on five things, at least, for every one that I think fits well, etc. That’s just too cumbersome to do online.”
