Amazon.com to sell clothing
By Anne D'Innocenzio
Associated Press
NEW YORK — The king of online sales of books, DVDs and many other items wants to be the place to shop for new jeans and sweaters.
Amazon.com is expected to launch an apparel store as early as this week, in partnership with more than a dozen companies, including Eddie Bauer, Nordstrom, Gap and Old Navy, according to a source familiar with the venture.
The move comes at a time of increasingly strong growth for online apparel, one of the biggest categories in e-commerce.
And it's occurring as two behemoth retailers — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Kmart Corp. — are looking to bring back apparel on their Web sites.
Amazon spokesman Bill Curry declined to comment on the new venture, but according to sources, it would be similar to the other retail partnerships the online merchant has already formed with stores such as Circuit City Stores Inc., Target Corp. and Office Depot Inc.
In those arrangements, Amazon.com serves as a sales channel, with its partners owning the inventory and responsible for packing and shipping.
What kind of commission Amazon, which had $3.1 billion in sales last year, would receive in the new partnerships remains a secret. The sources said only that the company was seeking a three-year deal with each partner.
Sales of online clothing, including footwear and accessories, is expected to climb from $4.2 billion in 2001 to $5.2 billion this year, according to Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass. By 2007, they should reach $22.5 billion.
Despite such healthy growth, Amazon.com's venture is not seen as a sure thing.
"A lot will depend on execution," said Kate Delhagen, an analyst at Forrester. "It will depend on having great brands, offering discount incentives and product pages" that offer good graphics.
