“Just picked up a sweet new suit at the bookstore,” said no one ever.
That could be said about a lot of things before Amazon managed to pivot from humble online bookseller to the place that will happily restock your toilet paper at the touch of a button.
After quietly launching seven brands of private-label clothing offering around 1,800 products, early reviews of Amazon’s Franklin Tailored suits have started to trickle in.
Although the $248-$295 two-pieces aren’t quite five-star material, the Canadian-made wool suits are “a little tailored, without being skinny” and offer “decent quality” at a “fair price.” The move to homemade brands seems logical for the online retail giant considering they make a 40 percent average profit on apparel sales.
The seven new lines may also seek to replace brand name offerings that wouldn’t otherwise be available on Amazon. “When we see gaps, when certain brands have actually decided for their own reasons not to sell with us, our customer still wants a product like that,” company fashion VP Jeff Yurcisin said last year.
If the apparel initiative is a success, it could push Amazon’s profits and boost earnings per share by at least 25 cents in 2017, according to some estimates. That’s the same year Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos plans to start launching paying customers 62 miles above Earth in rockets made by his Blue Origin space company.
Don’t be surprised if Franklin Tailored is doing spacesuits by then.
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