Amazon Preparing To Launch Its Own Clothing Line
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Online giant is searching for fashion talent to make its private label a reality.
Online retail giant Amazon is looking to break into the fashion business in a serious way. The online retailer already stocks over 30 million items of clothing for sale, and has also acquired fashion sites Shopbob, MyHabit, and East Dane. It also is one of the biggest sponsors of New York Fashion Week’s Men’s shows, according to Racked.
These efforts demonstrate a concerted initiative to boost apparel sales, with the available items growing 91 percent last year, according to Re/Code. Rumors emerged last year that Amazon was considering taking the leap into fashion, and now Women’s Wear Daily has taken note of a job posting from Amazon for a senior sourcing manager that went up late last week that suggest the move is imminent. According to Racked, “Amazon is currently in hiring mode and the company is looking for people with fashion industry experience to come on and makes its private label a reality.”
The job posting for a senior sourcing manager says that Amazon is looking for “an entrepreneurial, analytical, and highly motivated [senior] sourcing manager to join our team to launch new high-quality products for our global customers,” according to WWD.
The person that Amazon hires will "drive the supplier selection process, negotiate contracts, and manage our portfolio of manufacturers on a global scale. They will be an expert at selecting factories across the globe that can reliably deliver products on spec at high quality levels and targeted costs."
Last October at WWD’s WWD Apparel and Retail CEO Summit, Amazon Fashion’s VP of clothing and the CEO of its Shopbop unit, Jeff Yurcisin, acknowledged that Amazon shoppers are interested in buying top brands when it comes to fashion.
“For Amazon, we know our customers love brands, many of the brands in this room…and that’s where the lion’s share of our business comes from,” Yurcisin said then. “When we see gaps, when certain brands have actually decided for their own reasons not to sell with us, our customer still wants a product like that.”
According to a report last year from research firm Cowen and Company, Amazon could leap-frog over Macy’s in apparel sales to become number one in that category in the next couple of years.