Amazon closes its two Style physical clothing stores, after opening the first in May 2022 and closing most of its physical stores, including bookstores, in 2022
The two stores, near LA and in Columbus, Ohio, are closing soon, about 17 months after the first one opened. … Steve Dennis : Amazon Style stores to be shuttered. Physical retail isn't dead. Boring, overly left-brained designed, ironically named, retail is dead. Neil Saunders : Amazon is shuttering its physical clothing stores just 17 months after opening the first outlet, abandoning another brick-and-mortar retail format as the company sharpens its focus on grocery stores. …
Context & Ripple Effects
Amazon Style began as a tightly integrated fashion-store experiment: its planned launch emphasized an app-driven fitting-room workflow, followed by the opening of the first Glendale location in May 2022.
The closure extends Amazon's earlier retreat from several specialty retail formats, including its plan to close 68 bookstores, 4-star, and Pop Up locations. The remaining physical-retail focus is grocery rather than apparel.
First-order effects
- Amazon will exit the Amazon Style format entirely, closing its two apparel stores near Los Angeles and in Columbus roughly 17 months after the first opening.
- Employees, local shoppers, and apparel brands using the stores lose the physical channel; Amazon reallocates attention from this format toward grocery.
Second-order effects
- The shutdown removes a live testbed for the app-led store and fitting-room model introduced with Amazon Style, limiting its immediate use as a differentiator in physical apparel retail.
- Rival apparel retailers face less pressure from Amazon in this specific store format, while Amazon's remaining brick-and-mortar efforts are more concentrated in grocery.
Third-order effects
- If Amazon continues pruning non-grocery formats, its physical strategy is likely to become more selective: stores must serve a clear strategic role rather than function as broad retail experiments.
- The pattern suggests that translating Amazon's digital shopping systems into durable specialty-store operations remains difficult; the strength of that conclusion depends on results from its remaining formats.
The trend: Amazon is narrowing its physical-retail footprint from multiple experimental specialty formats toward a smaller set of strategically prioritized categories, notably grocery.