UPDATED 18:11 EDT / JUNE 20 2017

EMERGING TECH

Amazon Prime Wardrobe is a new ‘try before you buy’ clothes service

Amazon.com Inc. has come a long way since its days as a simple online bookseller, which it demonstrated last week when it bought upscale grocery chain Whole Foods Market Inc. for $13.7 billion. Today, the ecommerce giant once again branched out into new territory with the announcement of Amazon Prime Wardrobe, a new delivery service for Prime subscribers that lets you try clothes on before you buy them and return what you don’t want.

Similar to clothes box subscription services like Trunk Club, Prime Wardrobe sends several clothing items at once, and customers can keep what they want and send back the rest for free within seven days using a prepaid shipping label. Those who keep three or four items out of their order get a 10 percent discount, and customers who keep at least five items get a 20 percent discount.

Amazon already offered free returns on a number of items, including clothes, but Prime Wardrobe makes the process a bit easier. Amazon said more than a million items are eligible for Prime Wardrobe, including clothes from brands like Calvin Klein, Levi’s, Adidas, Timex and Carter’s.

In addition to pushing clothing sales, Prime Wardrobe could give Amazon valuable data about customers’ interests based not only on what they order and what they keep, but also on the items they choose to return.

Prime Wardrobe could also integrate nicely with the still invitation-only Amazon Echo Look, an Alexa-powered connected device that uses a camera and computer vision AI to tell help you decide what to wear. Echo Look also takes full-length photos so users can say what they look like from every angle, which is useful for those of us who apparently do not own mirrors. If Echo Look ever lives up to the promise of becoming a robot fashion consultant, it could pose a serious threat to services such as Trunk Club, especially if it’s combined with Prime Wardrobe.

Prime Wardrobe is currently in testing only, but you can sign up for alerts to know when the service rolls out to your city. You can watch a video showcasing Prime Wardrobe below:

Photo: Amazon

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