Bad News From The Wikimedia: Amazon Is Eating Into The Clothing Market

Amazon has become the biggest threat to global fashion retailers by constantly increasing the size of clothing.
According to the latest survey report released by Coresight Research, Amazon has successfully defeated Wal Mart and become the most popular clothing retailer among American consumers. The report shows that among 1732 American adults surveyed, 65% of the respondents bought clothes or shoes on Amazon. com, and clothing exceeded books, cosmetics and electronic products to become the most popular product on Amazon. com.
21.5% of the respondents said they would choose Amazon's own clothing brand products, whose sales in the entire clothing and footwear category are second only to Nike, Under Armour and adidas. In addition, about 19% of respondents said they planned to spend part or all of their clothing from T J. Retailers such as Maxx and Marshall moved to Amazon, up from 16.6% last year.
Coresight stressed that the survey results are bad news for apparel retailers. When respondents were asked to choose a shopping place other than Amazon, the answer was Wal Mart, followed by Target, which means that Amazon has occupied the leading position in the clothing industry in the United States, while Wal Mart was recognized as the largest clothing retailer in the United States for a long time.
Affected by this, Macy's and J The sales growth and customer flow of traditional retail giants such as Penny were severely hit, and the cold winter of physical retail in the United States continued to deteriorate. According to statistics, within 48 hours last weekend, Gap、 A total of 465 stores were closed by brands and chain stores such as Weimi and Foot Locker.
In fact, as early as last March, Axios quoted five sources to report that US President Trump once talked about using anti-monopoly law to "chase" Amazon, because he was worried that traditional shopping malls and physical retail stores might be squeezed out of the market by Amazon. Trump also hopes to adjust Amazon's tax treatment and publicly appeal for Internet tax on online retailers.
Some analysts pointed out that Amazon has always been attractive for its convenient browsing, inexpensive delivery services and a wide range of goods. By providing consumers with rich and convenient shopping services through massive brand aggregation, on the one hand, it has expanded the selection of diversified products as much as possible, on the other hand, its increasingly perfect logistics system has improved the delivery speed, It is gradually overcoming the inherent drawbacks of online shopping.
Amazon began to gradually increase its fashion apparel segment in 2012, and then in February 2016, it suddenly launched seven self operated apparel brands in a low profile, namely Society New York Lark and Ro、Scout and Ro、Franklin and Freeman、Franklin Tailored、James and Erin And North Eleven, covering women's clothing, women's bags, children's clothing and men's clothing, and the product category has now increased to 4904.
After 2017, Amazon continued to make efforts from the clothing sales platform to the upstream clothing supply chain, the platform's self run clothing brands, and the end of the consumer experience, making traditional clothing retailers under increasing pressure.
According to Bloomberg, citing insiders, Amazon is still cooperating with some of the largest sportswear suppliers in order to develop its own brand sportswear, which may set off a new storm in this already noisy industry and make several of the world's largest sports brands face new competition. Amazon has already set foot in the fashion industry of its own brands and launched professional clothing, jacket and dress brands such as Goodthreads and Paris Sunday.
At the same time, Amazon launched a beta version of Prime Wardrobe's "try before buy" service, which means Prime members can enjoy placing an online order to send their favorite clothes home for trial wear, select the clothes left within seven days, and then send the rest in Prime Wardrobe boxes back to this special service. Brands covered by Prime Wardrobe include popular adidas J. In addition to Brand, Levi's and Amazon's own clothing brands, they also include Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss, Theory and other high-end brands.
At present, young consumers are increasingly inclined to "try before buying". Klarna, a global payment service provider, recently released a research report on "try before buying", Klarna found that young consumers are paying more attention to seamless, personalized and flexible shopping experience. More than 66% of the respondents said that free and simple return policy is a key factor to improve the online shopping experience, and that they are willing to pay higher prices if they can try clothes before buying.
In order to further break into the luxury high-end market, Amazon finally started to face up to the problem of counterfeit goods this year. In its annual report submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States, Amazon mentioned for the first time that the company could not prevent illegal, counterfeit and pirated goods that store sellers might sell through Amazon. CNBC analysts stressed that this report reflects Amazon's concern about the fake issue of its platform, because the fake issue has never been mentioned in the annual report before.
Last week, Amazon suddenly stepped up its crackdown on counterfeit products by launching a new project called "Project Zero", allowing brand companies to delete counterfeit products themselves. It is reported that Amazon will combine the self-help anti counterfeiting of brands, the automatic scanning of logos and trademarks on the website, and the unique codes that help to confirm the authenticity of physical goods. Brands that join the program will be able to delete the counterfeit products they believe without first reporting to Amazon.
According to fashion headline data, Amazon's revenue in 2018 reached $232.9 billion, and its profit exceeded $10 billion for the first time. In the fourth quarter, Amazon's revenue increased by 20% year-on-year to $72.4 billion, with a profit of $3 billion, exceeding $1 billion for the fifth consecutive quarter. Among them, the number of Amazon Prime members has reached 101 million, 62% of American users have become Prime members, with an average annual cost of $1400, and non Prime members spend an average of $600.
Some analysts believe that in the visible time, Amazon will continue to win over mid tier and luxury brands, and brands such as Michael Kors and Kate Spade, which are dragged down by the downturn in the U.S. department store industry, are also courting Amazon.
It is worth noting that Amazon has also focused on the Chinese market, especially after its expansion in the Indian market was blocked. Starting this year, Amazon China will launch the "Fashion+" project, combine its global fashion resources with China's market resources, and establish a dedicated service team for fashion category sellers, aiming to help Chinese fashion category sellers better develop overseas fashion business and create their own brands through their platform, covering five categories, including clothing, jewelry, luggage, etc.
However, Amazon needs to be vigilant while accelerating its expansion. Some analysts say that it has reached a large scale before creating high profit businesses, and strong competitive threats will hinder its profit growth. Wal Mart, the world's largest physical retailer, will become Amazon's worst "nightmare" in the next two years.
Last March, Wal Mart launched four private clothing brands, including women's clothing brand Time&Tru, oversized women's clothing brand Terra&Sky, children's clothing brand Wonder Nation and men's clothing brand George, with prices ranging from $5 to $30. It also opened a special fashion and furniture website, which is considered the first step for the retailer to target Amazon.
In order to better compete with Amazon online, Wal Mart announced in February this year that it had acquired Aspectiva, an Israeli start-up. The company mainly analyzes UGC content of social platforms, such as consumer product reviews, through artificial intelligence technology, and combines it with shoppers' browsing behavior to provide product suggestions for online and physical shoppers, Similar to the concept of "new retail".
According to the latest data, Wal Mart's e-commerce sales increased by 43% in the fourth quarter, and achieved 40% online sales growth in 2018, which has surpassed Amazon's growth rate. Brett Biggs, the group's chief financial officer, also predicted that the growth rate in each quarter of this year would be between 30% and 40%, and the annual e-commerce sales would continue to grow by 35%.
According to the research of Edison Trends, Macy's online sales increased by 24%, while Target's online sales increased by 48%. The department store will also launch three underwear brands this month, mainly selling products such as bra, underwear and pajamas. The product price is one-third of the average price of Victoria's $60, with the maximum of $22. It is expected that the sales will exceed $1 billion in one year. Amazon launched its underwear brand Mae in 2017, which also sells for between $10 and $22.
At the same time, Wal Mart and other retailers entering the digital advertising field are also weakening part of Amazon's growth prospects and constantly challenging the position of this online retail giant in this field. Considering that Amazon only received $207 billion in revenue from the retail sector, while AWS's revenue exceeded $25 billion, Wal Mart actually has a larger retail business to attract advertisers, especially those looking for cross promotions between online and physical stores.
To be sure, in the nearly saturated apparel retail market divided by giants, the days of easily seizing market share are no longer over. With the change of consumer shopping concepts, the online and offline battle between Amazon and Wal Mart has just begun.
Since this year, Amazon's share price has increased by 8.6%, and its current market value is about 833.1 billion dollars. ? ? ? ? ? ? ?