Amazon: The New Luxury Retailers

The number of luxury retailers has gradually increased over the past few years, with connectivity to almost every part of the world. Amazon, the famous tech giants as we all know is the biggest company in the world right now. Guess what? From dominating almost every market they have ever decided to enter, Amazon is looking to enter the Luxury market as Luxury online retailers (WWD). Top luxury brands that hail from America and European countries have already lined up to take advantage of Amazon’s upcoming platform. The retail platform will debut in September in the U.S.A initially, at the same time as the opening of the luxury fashion season. The platform seems to be more like Luxury retailers ‘Farfetch’. It is said to operate more like a concession-based business model like a ‘Harrods’. When asked about the future of this upcoming platform, Amazon’s head of brands at Amazon Fashion, ‘Danny Keirouz’ who is rumored to be spearheading the platform refrained from any comments. The partnership of luxury brands with Amazon’s Luxury platform will be a huge advantage, as the luxury powerhouses can rely on the Tech giant’s fast and reliable delivery network.

The best part about this partnership is where Amazon is understood to be giving total transparency and letting brands have full control and freedom over their virtual stores and letting the brands sell at a lower (discounted) price if required to sell more on their platform. Quite a brilliant and beneficial strategy for Amazon and luxury brands respectively.  According to sources, Amazon‘s platform was supposed to launch in early spring, but because of the unforeseeable crisis of the COVID-19, the launch has been postponed to September.

According to (WWD) sources, Amazon is looking to invest a $100Million marketing campaign for Amazon’s upcoming Luxury platform and a sprawling warehouse seems to be underway in Arizona. You know Amazon’s serious about the luxury high-end online platform when they are ready to bank big on it.

Amazon is planning to spearhead the platform with 12 major fashion brands initially, which have not been revealed yet. Amazon aims to have 2 separate projects where one is to promote ‘Common Thread’ brands which are an initiative to boost upcoming fashion designer sales and the other platform to drive the commercial high-end brand sales, all part of their vision into ‘Fashion and Luxury’. Amazon is looking to work closely with the designers at the upcoming London Fashion Week in September to promote sustainability and commercial projects.

Since 2012, Amazon has been trying to penetrate the high-end luxury fashion digitally by brainstorming new ideas, but the ideas never came to fruition. With this heavy investment that is rumored to be, Luxury brands who have for long, suffered from packaging and overseas duties in shipping, the partnership with Amazon is going to cut all those costs and headaches and the added advantage of a credible Amazon platform is priceless. There are quite a few luxury online retail sellers in the market, but none have created that ‘Oomph’. With unsure changing times for physical retail, can Amazon’s new platform be the new savior for Luxury brands? Amazon’s new upcoming platform is surely one to look out for.