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For those men who are in need of a fashion guru, all they have to do now is look to Amazon for help. The e-commerce leader is now offering a new expansion to a service called
Personal Shopper by Prime Wardobe for just
$4.99 per month. The service originally launched a year ago for just women and is much like competitor Stitch Fix. As less people are buying their clothing at the store itself, it makes sense for Amazon to offer a service like this. With
Amazon Prime Day around the corner this could be a great gift idea!
How Personal Shopper by Prime Wardrobe works
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Amazon’s offering will match those who pay the $4.99 per month with a stylist who will choose an array of outfits for a specific customer to match their style. The clothes that are chosen are then sent to the customer each month so they can try the outfit on. In addition to style, customers can designate the budget they want to spend too. Customers are able to return clothes they do not want by sending the package back without issue up to a week after they are received. If customers need to do this, the shipping comes at no cost and packages are made to be seamlessly resealed.
Initially, interested men will be able to choose from a number of established brands, including Adidas, Levi’s, Original Penguin, Goodthreads, Amazon Essentials and more. Amazon will thus be including their own brands along with a decent amount of outside ones. Amazon has maintained that the Personal Shopper by Prime Wardrobe will have men’s styles numbering in the hundreds of thousands from more than one thousand unique brands.
Like Stitch Fix, the Amazon service begins by giving those interested a quiz about their style so it can then create personal recommendations based on the clothing available. There is also the ability to directly reach out to these personal stylists and ask specific questions. This allows for greater customization of outfits if necessary. A key difference here though is that Stitch Fix charges more than the Amazon offering as it has a “stylist fee” of $20, though that $20 is credited towards clothes available on the service.
Another great thing about the Amazon service is that it gives customers a notice or alert before each shipment so any selections can be reviewed one last time. Customers will be able to select as many as eight articles of clothing to have shipped to them rather than wait to see the selection when it arrives.
This was by no means the first time Amazon gave customers a product dealing with men’s fashion. The company has a feature in its Prime Wardrobe service that allows customers to try products on before they bought them without having to pay for the product upfront. The company claims this service has been already used by millions of people and many customers already have fashion profiles on the Prime Wardrobe section of the site. A flaw with Prime Wardrobe is that many of the products available are ineligible to be tried on at home especially if it is produced by a more prestigious brand.
This might seem to suggest that a huge percentage of the items chosen are Amazon produced products, but the company asserts that in fact only 1% of the selection sent to customers are owned by the company itself.
Could Amazon ever really compete with Stitch Fix in this space?
Thus far, Amazon claims “tens of thousands” of customers used the Personal Shopper service prior to the launch for men. This is a number that is dwarfed by the 3.5 million customers Stitch Fix has acquired. Stitch Fix has played an interesting role since the onset of the pandemic as far as helping get people a varied selection of clothing they can wear for video calls, among other things.
Clearly, this is Amazon’s attempt to capitalize on the trend of purchasing clothes online and attempt at expanding its existing service to men. Though Stitch Fix has a sizable market share in this category, the low monthly subscription cost and Amazon’s wide infrastructure make it a promising company to at least take a chunk out of their business.
The target audience might be those who have at least some extra income to spend on clothing each month. These customers also don’t want to have to go to the store too often, especially during a deadly pandemic. Whether or not many men will begin using this service is to be determined, but it is at least a good option to have available during a pandemic especially.
Currently, the only way to use the Personal Shopper component of Amazon is via the mobile app in the U.S. only. Customers also need to have a Prime membership as well. Personal Shopper gives men a cheap and easy way to have at least someone fairly knowledgeable help with style. Like the clothing, it might be worth trying out.
