High-tech Amazon Style Ends With Closure of Glendale Store

Amazon Style fall fashion season was its last, as it closed its only two U.S. stores, including one in Glendale.

Amazon.com has shuttered its tech-driven Amazon Style stores in Columbus, Ohio, and at Americana at Brand at 899 Americana Way, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported. The stores went dark Nov. 9.

The Seattle-based e-commerce giant said it would shut its only brick-and-mortar clothing stores to focus on its neighborhood grocery stores, including Amazon Fresh stores and Whole Foods Market.

The firm’s physical retail “remains an important part of our business, and we’re continuing to invest in growing our grocery stores,” Amazon spokeswoman Kristen Kish said in a statement via the Wall Street Journal.

The quiet end to Amazon Style followed a runway-like announcement early last year that Amazon would go tech with clothes.

Amazon Style, the clothing boutique at developer Rick Caruso’s Americana, was the company’s latest gambit into in-person retail.

The store featured women’s and men’s apparel, shoes and accessories. But unlike traditional clothing stores, Amazon Style used artificial intelligence to recommend duds to customers while they browsed the racks.

The high tech even followed them into the fitting room, “where they can use a touchscreen to browse more options, rate items and request more sizes or styles that are delivered directly to their room within minutes,” Amazon said in a statement at the time.

The washout of the app-driven clothing format echoes Amazon’s other recent store closures in the San Fernando Valley, according to the Business Journal.

In March last year, Amazon said it was shutting down its 4-Star stores, including one at the Americana at Brand. These shops sold some of its website’s best-selling items, from electronics to kitchen products. The 4-Star opened in Glendale in 2019.

In May last year, Amazon closed a Whole Foods Market in Tarzana after the company posted a $3.8 billion first-quarter loss. The store, one of six Whole Foods to have closed their doors, is still empty.

Whole Foods still operates markets in Los Angeles County, including Burbank, El Segundo, Pasadena, Sherman Oaks, Silver Lake, Venice and Woodland Hills.

Amazon said its profit tripled in the third quarter to nearly $10 billion as strong sales in its cloud-computing, advertising and retail units helped the company continue its rebound from a slowdown after the pandemic, according to the Wall Street Journal.

— Dana Bartholomew