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Amazon Will Now Let You Try On Clothes Before You Buy Them (theverge.com)
For many people, buying clothing online is not worth the hassle of getting a pair of pants or a shirt that does not fit. Many retailers have sought to eliminate that risk by offering free returns on clothing, but now Amazon is going even further. From a report: Amazon is launching Prime Wardrobe, a new program that will let you try on clothes before you buy them. Once you select at least three Prime Wardrobe-eligible pieces from over a million clothing options, Amazon will ship your selections to you in a resealable return box with a prepaid shipping label. After you try on the clothes, you can put the ones you don't want back in the box and leave it at your front door -- Prime Wardrobe also comes with free scheduled pickups from UPS. If you decide to keep at least three items you will get a 10 percent discount off your purchase, and if you keep five or more pieces the discount rises to 20 percent.
Fart in the pants and send them back.
used clothes from Amazon, just what I wanted.
The big problem is the lack of standardization in clothing sizes.
Depending on the brand a Medium Sized shirt on me can fit nicely or it could be Tight and I will need to go to a large version, when then becomes baggy on me. Other brands have finer detail on the sizing, but the size number is only relevant to the brand.
Then you have the problem with different body types. As a stockier build, many things that fit are either too long, or just tight around the arms and shoulder other than that they may fit.
Except for having free return shipping. Amazon should ship over a Tailor to get your size.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This will be great for my wife. Not so great for my wallet.
"But it's 20% off! I'm saving us money by buying more!"
Christ. My gf is going to go fucking *crazy* with this.
Prime Video. Prime Pantry. Prime Wardrobe.
Sure as hell seems like every new feature on Amazon is making a Prime membership rather mandatory instead of merely a nice benefit to cut down on shipping costs.
I shouldn't be surprised. Being forced to subscribe to every service you use to create a per-customer-cost-for-life revenue stream is the definition of capitalism in the 21st century.
To all the dudes (and dudettes) out there with wives and girlfriends (boyfriends, or girlfriends too, I don't judge) spending their money on clothes, this is much better! I don't know about you but there have been many occasions when my credit card billing period ended before the 15 shirts/pants whatever that she ordered were returned and refunded. I end up having to pay off the balance regardless of the fact that $400 bucks was refunded by the time the statement actually arrived. On rare occasion that even puts me at a negative balance, it's absurd. With this new Amazon option, the benefit is you are only charged for the things she's actually keeping so you don't have to worry about that. OH and if you have a revolving balance? Imagine the daily interest you were paying for something that was just gonna get refunded anyway!
Used to be Vanity Sizing only messed up the woman's clothing market. But now it's infected men's clothing as well.
Phrases like "relaxed fit" are only the first clue. There are now all kinds of tricks to telling what the actual size will be. If you see any kind of adjustments or elastic you can be sure they will be super oversized to make men feel better about their growing girth.
All this makes it brutally hard to buy clothes that fit based on measurements!
The sad part is, I don't think we can turn back. Consumers love the idea of wearing a smaller size than their real measurement, so like the marching morons with their speedometers that lie, we keep buying the vanity sizing.
Cool. I'm buying underwear.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Pervert.
Seriously... online business is decimating brick and mortar stores but there is absolutely no way I would ever buy something like a sofa without trying it out first.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I guess the only missing part is combining this with the "auto renew" function they already have for toothbrushes and the like. "Send me five shirts I might like every three months" doesn't seem too much of a stretch here. I know my wife has ordered many pairs of shoes from Zappos (bought by Amazon in 2009) and they make returns very easy, so she will get multiple sizes to see which fit the best and return all the others.
Fart in the pants and send them back.
That would concern me more, except that neither I nor anyone else I know need XXXXXXL pants.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Jacket and long-sleeve shirt sizing especially seems crazy to me. You can't boil down a shirt to just "XL" or "L" - often the "L" jackets fit me perfectly, except I have long arms so the sleeves are too short... so I usually get to choose between baggy jacket or sleeves that are too short.
I am sure hoping with the increase of technology in manufacturing that pretty much all shirts and pants can be ordered with a variety of sleeve lengths/chest size/neck size/waist/inseam.... just like dress shirts. At least pants you can mostly order that way (though even then sizes do not seem fully consistent).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>For many people, buying clothing online is not worth the hassle of getting a pair of pants or a shirt that does not fit.
For me it's ok. If I walk into a clothing store, E.G. Nordstom, there's maybe a 20% chance I'll find something that fits and is shaped reasonably and doesn't cost a stupid amount of money. However having found some fitting clothes at M&S and fitting clothes at Nordstom, I certainly can look up the clothes online, filter by size, brand and price and have a close to 100% chance of finding shirts and trousers that are likely to fit. The occasional misfit will cost me maybe $35, but that's a lot better than schlepping to the other side of town multiple times to find one item of clothing and probably blowing more than $35 feeding the family or them buying ancillary mall crap.
For whatever reason, M&S in the UK make trousers that fit and Nordstrom in the USA makes shirts that fit. So when an item starts to wear out, I start looking online and swap it out when I find and buy a replacement.
This is so much better than how clothes shopping used to be.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I think you pick the size and outfits you want. I don't think they randomly send you clothes.
If the minimum order is 3 pieces of clothing, and assuming that the average consumer only buys 1, that means Amazon needs to hold 2 piece of unsold inventory for every 1 piece they sell. That's a substantial amount of inventory that needs to be held to justify each sale. The only way I can see this working is if they price their items higher to account for the costs of the clothing that is returned without being purchased. How does this model make business sense?
The items are marked up at +20% and if you buy more than 5, the penalty is removed.
Any "discount" you ever get is only the removal of a markup.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Amazon continues in its mission to complete destroy the environment. All of their deliveries are bad enough, but free shipping back and forth just to TRY ON clothes? Come on... Until they have a viable drone or other delivery programme that is carbon-neutral, no responsible person can participate in such a horrible, polluting enterprise.
The only way I can see this working is if they price their items higher to account for the costs of the clothing that is returned without being purchased. How does this model make business sense?
That is what happens in shops - they stock many different sizes and have to wait for the right-sized customer to come in and buy.
But this way, Amazon swaps the overheads of retail outlets for the overheads of transportation costs, which I would guess are a lot lower.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
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Want to ship boxes around the country adding weight and landfill mass while burning fuel for NO DISCERNIBLE REASON?
Well the alternative is everyone driving their SUV to the mall (10-60 minutes away perhaps) just so they can try on clothes in person. Replacing that with delivery drivers from Fedex/UPS ferrying boxes back and forth, and improving efficiency by combining shipments onto one truck for one neighborhood/route (so that 100 customers get their clothes delivered by 1 truck, rather than 100 people driving their personal vehicles to the mall), seems like it's actually better for the planet. The main downside is the cardboard boxes which they don't seem to reuse that much, but cardboard is highly recyclable and actually is recycled heavily by big companies. I don't know what you mean by "adding weight and landfill mass". Amazon is pretty bad about adding any packing materials to their boxes actually (they just toss the goods in there and tape it up usually), and I don't see how this adds to the landfill any more than people driving themselves to the mall.
Seriously, if you think about it, online shopping is likely far more ecological than shopping at a local B&M store. The main downsides are 1) the inability to see something up-close and touch it and try it on (without sending it back), 2) having to wait to get it unless you pay for expensive shipping, and 3) the lack of the social aspect of shopping, and getting a little exercise from walking around which shopping in a mall forces you to do.
Schoolboys may buy standard sizes off department store racks. It often doesnt cost all that much more to go to a real [wo]menswear store and have clothing properly adjusted.
Most of their clothing and accessories are already eligible for Free Returns, without needing Prime.