Amazon Prime Wardrobe lets you try on and return clothes free
techcrunch.com
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It feels like it's set up to make returning substantial numbers of pieces of clothing more normal and expected. I'm guessing at other retailers with a free shipping/return policy, they'd frown on very high return rates.
My wife loves them because the stores near us don't have a huge selection of Petite sizes, and her return rate is somewhere around the 30% range. The experience is so good that she's incredibly loyal to them.
* Boohoo
* Pretty Little Thing
* Missguided
* Marks & Spencers (non-food)
* House of Fraser (under 20Kg)
* Debenhams
Outside of these, with "Collect Plus" now being next-to ubiquitous in the UK (over 6,000 participating stores) any store using Collect Plus (or DPDs Ship-to-shop) can offer free returns via the stores. As an example of how useful this is in general, the tiny corner shop on my street is a Collect Plus collection point.
They even have places to try on clothes, and packaging materials there, so you can return the items without ever taking them home.
Unfortunately they are quite expensive from a retailers perspective, or roughly equivalent to a Prime membership if the user subscribes directly (so they can use it with all online stores).
This bypasses a lot of that, in the same way that something like Trunk Club or Warby Parker does.
Where do you buy your clothes? I use Gilt, Mr. Porter, and brand specific pages. My last online purchase was from sevenforallMankind where I bought a pricey pair of jeans and if I needed to return them it would have been $5 for shipping.
At least here in Germany the Widerrufsrecht ("right of withdrawal") allows you to return items within 14 days without shipping costs or any explanation. It is my understanding that this applies to the whole european union.
Sure, cool, but that helps my original point.
No one lets you return clothes after you've worn them, including Amazon. (With exceptions for defective clothing, typically.)
15 items could easily be $1,000, and asking someone to pay a $1,000 just to try, even if they know they can return and get a refund, is a huge barrier. If Amazon would indeed charge you only after the 7-days, they could convert a lot of store buyers their ways.
As a customer, you can order from any Retailer and return within 14 days without giving any reason, as we have a special "Fernabsatzgesetz" (Distance Selling Act).
Nearly every Retailer offers free returns and above 40 Euro purchase value, returns even have to be free of charge.
Many Retailers offer more than 14 days, 30 days is nothing special and some like Zalando (a Zappos clone) even offer 100 days of free returns.
This was removed from the law in June 2014. Retailers can now say that customers need to pay a carrier for the shipment back regardless of value. Some do, most don't. They can however never charge "restocking fees" or whatnot. The same day the EU Consumer Rights Directive was put in force so all EU customers now have this protection.
(The Fernabsatzgesetz was removed in 2002 by the way. This topic is now regulated in the usual BGB.)
Classic Amazon/Google move, take away the easy appeal and marginalize the growing competitor, forcing them to innovate if they're going to find a role.
Stitch Fix's proposition isn't free returns - plenty of places sell clothes online with free returns - Stitch Fix's appeal is that they will do the work of picking out potential items for you so that you don't have to comb through hundreds of items to find what you want.
It mostly just seems like Amazon is bringing free returns to the low end of the market.
It's possible ML-driven recommendations may surpass the recommendations of StitchFix's "personal stylists" in terms of accuracy. And unless "personal stylists" is just a market-facing name for "algorithms," ML-driven recommendations by Amazon would certainly surpass StitchFix in terms of efficiency and operating costs.
In our town there is a boutique in a strip mall. They cut off the tags from other store's products and put their on their merchandise. A high schooler kid was heard telling her friends her job is to do this.. Some were clearance from Walmart; others Kohls.
Amazon should really figure out how to not allow knock offs.
It already is, unfortunately, at least that's been my personal experience.
In most of Asia, and maybe around the world. There's no return policy. It sucks.
It allows you to change your mind if you made an impulse purchase, but not really to "test" a product. The returned item must be unused and in new condition, with any seals unbroken - generally if you open the box or rip any plastic bags the online retailer doesn't have to accept a return any more.
Also, in general, there is no "unused" or "box sealed" condition. Just you have to return the item undamaged and "as it was".
You are required to take good care of the goods and you may be liable for the reduced value of goods caused by handling them beyond what’s necessary to be sure they work and are what you ordered. [2]
[1] http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar... [2] https://www.ccpc.ie/consumers/shopping/buying-online/your-ri...
This refund must include any shipping charges you paid when you made your purchase. However, the trader may charge you additional delivery costs if you specifically requested non-standard (express) delivery. [http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar...]
By now, that's about as notable as delivering goods to your door in cardboard boxes.
Amazon already had free shipping and returns before for Prime users. This however is a completely different psychology to online shopping.
[...]
> This however is a completely different psychology to online shopping.
“Buy more and get a discount which increases, within some range, based on quantiry” is not new in any area of retail, including online shopping.
What amazon is doing is not the same as this quote. This isn't buying in bulk. This is more kin to B&M retail shopping where you don't have to pay any upfront costs to try on an article of clothing and assess fit. Only now, it's in the comfort of your own home.
The discount would be icing on the cake, but in the realm of fashion, 10-20% off is game changer.
Quantity-based discounts of 10-20% at volumes of 3-5 items are low in clothing retail; 25% at a quantity of two isn't uncommon (consistency and simplicity across the board of the Amazon discount structure might be somewhat novel, but the level of discount is not.)
No upfront costs is isomorphic to “buy on credit with low-friction returns”.
In the video, they say/show that it includes a printed prepaid label and home-pickup. So you don't even have to go to UPS.
It seems odd to compete with Zappos when it already has a loyal user base.
It's a bit of a problem because, "this is why we can't have nice things", some people are arseholes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37711091
> "I return half of what I buy," says 30-year-old Alex Demetri, who spends £500 to £700 on clothes each month.
> She also admits to wearing some of her clothes first before returning them.
> It is customers like Ms Demetri who are causing problems for shops, which are "struggling to cope" with the number of items returned, new research suggests.
Between housewares, groceries, and now clothes, is there any more clear philosophy that Amazon wants us to never leave the house and socialize with one another? I mean, it's not that far from potential reality. Between mobile phone self-isolation and never having to actually go to stores where people work to make a living, this is kind of an unnerving future. Well, for those of us who want to preserve some shreds of humanity under the shadow of the Amazonmandyias Bezos is building.
Well, I suppose you might have a point if your only source of interaction with other people is at a mall. However, the less time I spend in a shopping mall or grocery store, the more time I have to get outside, take a bike ride, hike with the family, sit outside at a cafe, garden, etc. If anything, the less time I need to waste at a physical store, the more free time I have to leave the house and socialize with others in a much more authentic setting.
So, it's up to us on an individual level to preserve our own humanity. It plucks some discomfort cords in me to see the same trajectory you do. It hurts even more to see society roll over for it. We're corralled and herded to their nearest wedge issue that resonates so we can focus all our discomfort and unhappiness at marketeer sanctioned foci. A few people say things like "huh automation, where's that going to go when there's no unskilled jobs?"
"Nah that's not a problem, job retraining and economics and stuff but HEY check out this buffet of exaggerated wedge issues. Don't the guys on the other side really piss you off? Haha yeah."
Millions of people divided into black vs. white issues where both sides are mostly reasonable people pissed off at the other side's crazies. Crazy is distributed evenly enough to support this system. The ebb and flow of the number of crazies on either side of the issue is balanced with media magnification and non-reporting.
Keep the fight going, never come to any conclusions at all costs.
The psychographics industry mastered provoking conspicuous consumption in the 80s and 90s. Household debt peaked in the early 2000's partially because of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_debt#/media/File:U.S...
I think that over time, so much has wealth and.. potential has been sucked away that it's somehow more profitable for the industry to move on to influencing and directing outrage. "The attention economy" is the new state of things. Too much production for humans to consume it all. We have articles talking about "peak attention". How dehumanizing is that? Your attention and your thoughts have been commoditized. Companies pump it like oil and sell it back to you. We live on a mountain of abstractions that dehumanize us as individuals and stir us all together into a slurry of hardly dissimilar demographic chunks.
It'll be interesting to see what's next.
The fashion assistant drives to your place with all the clothes you want to try, waits for you to try them on, perhaps offers some suggestions, and then leaves with whatever you don't want.
Has this type of idea ever been explored in the US?
Frankly, if custom ordering shirts/pants weren't hard to do right and as costly, I'd just do that.
They do the same thing (kinda) with Prime Exclusives, which are laughably almost always available at Walmart and Target for the same price or cheaper...
I understand PrimePantry for heavy/bulky items like laundry detergent. I don't get it for lightweight stuff like razor blades. I can't figure out why those items can't be bought as Add-On items to regular shipments.
Makes sense to have the discount if you keep items, savings from processing returns.
[1] http://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a8386/pants-size-c...
>It's also unbelievably damaging to environment
Citation needed. Are we talking about the fuel costs from picking up and delivering a package?
>customers like this aren't worth anything to us
It sounds like you have an attitude around retail that isn't very future-proof. I feel that, if your attitude persists, soon you will find that the customers do not think your business is worth anything to them.
Why exactly is this unbelievably damaging to environment is an exercise left to the reader.
How do you replicate the fitting room experience online? with colors you can see differently on a monitor, texture you can't feel, sizes for each body type that are different, etc. , the best way today is to order more and return.
> Why exactly is this unbelievably damaging to environment is an exercise left to the reader.
Well people need to find clothes that fits them. So they're either left with going to a brick & mortar store, or ordering online and returning items that don't fit.
Me and all other customers driving to the outlet malls (assuming that mall has all the stores we're interested in, otherwise drive to each store separately), and driving back in our cars is certainly more damaging to the environment than one extra shipping, given that UPS, USPS, Fedex and everybody involved in the transportation business is making sure they're wasting the least amount of gas.
I was just thinking about a compromise model: what if a retailer would deal with the send/return cost once as a bit of configuration and customer acquisition cost and profile the choices to a standard type of fit. Then from that point on you could shop just for the type of clothing that will fit you well, and would only be able to return if you could show that it wasn't the case.
It obviously wouldn't work with standard brands of clothing since the fit there can be so variable, but if they clothing would be engineered for this I could see it working. It would be an interesting trade off for customers to consider. In the end you get lower prices, unless the real standardization is too costly.
Seems like something lots of people would go for. It seems like more and more people are aware of all the things that are priced into goods, like the cost of physical shops or the cost of shipping/returns for online retailers.
I work in a store that has, on average, 200-250 returns a day (1/10 sales/traffic). It's a very popular store.
I would segment this way (without any data, just envelope) in no particular order:
Buy A Lot & Return Some or All
Occasional Honest Jane
Mad As Hell With Wild Expectations
Scammers (part 1); Return counter is a bank
Scammers (part 2): Free lease of equipment
Scammers (part 3): Online Returns
Scammers (part 4): Garage Sale Pickups
Scammers (part 5): Anything Electronic or Gift Card-esque
Scammers (part 6): Stolen Goods
Scammers (part 7): "Last 15 minute Jack"
Shoplifter
I clearly see that we affect customer behavior if we turn the screws on our policy.
Wear and return is certainly prevalent though our customers see it more often in occasion-wear (for example bridesmaid dresses). Their average customer values (even their highest returning customers) far exceed $0.01. I'd be really interested in learning why things are so different at your organisation (not that I doubt you but it would make for a really interesting dataset!)
We generally try to help clients integrate returns prediction into their business rules. For example if you've got scarcity of stock, perhaps prioritise customers who are most likely to keep items. Or if you're handling customer calls at the contact centre, prioritise customers who are returns sensitive (those who probably won't shop with you ever again if they have a poor returns experience).
Perhaps because it's not a subscription model in the way TC works, people feel less pressure to keep something?
...because it's Amazon.
No, seriously. Having a feature working somewhere on the internet, is totally different from having it working on Facebook, Google, or Amazon. Usage goes through the roof, because people already know and trust those behemoths.
Also the fact that you are the one choosing the items in the box as opposed to having a "stylist" choose them for you could be considered appealing (depending on the person).
Then they came for retailers, and I did not speak out - for I was not Macy's.
Then they came for the cloud, and I did not speak out - for I was not IBM.
Then they came for grocery delivery, and I did not speak out - for I was not PeaPod.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.
RIP TrunkClub and Stitch Fix?
You just compared good customer service to the largest genocide in human history.
- Can I have a box each week?
- How many items can I put in the box?
- Do they need to be washed until return?
Why buy, when I can get free ones every week for a fee I already potentionally pay?