US retail company Amazon is opening a physical apparel store that will be called Amazon Style, further expanding its presence in the bricks-and-mortar segment.
The first store will be open at the Americana at Brand shopping mall in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale in California later this year, the company said on Thursday.
The store will offer women’s and men’s clothing, shoes and accessories from various brands.
With the tap of a button, shoppers can add the item to a fitting room or, if they don’t need to try it on, send it directly to the pickup counter
Simoina Vasen,
managing director of Amazon Style
Amazon Style is built around personalisation, said Simoina Vasen, managing director of Amazon Style.
“Personal styling used to be expensive and feel exclusive, but with Amazon Style’s sophisticated technology, unique store design and thoughtful curation, we have made it easier than ever for customers to discover items they will look and feel great in,” Ms Vasen said.
The National reported in August about Amazon's plans to enter the physical clothing retail business.
The e-commerce company will use machine learning algorithms to offer customised, real-time recommendations for each customer as they shop. Customers can share information such as their style, fit and other preferences to receive more refined recommendations.
Customers can also shop items on Amazon.com and request delivery to Amazon Style to try them on in a fitting room.
“If an item isn't perfect, customers can return it in store and we'll take care of the rest,” Ms Vasen said.
It is not clear which brands Amazon will sell in its stores, but it is likely to sell items across categories including electronic goods, household objects, sports equipment and clothing.
Amazon Style is the Seattle-based company’s latest foray into physical retail.
Currently, it has physical outlets selling books and groceries. It also runs pop-up shops across the US. Pop-ups bring the goods from the millions of products available on Amazon.com to shopping malls.
In February 2020, Amazon opened its first full-size, cashier-less grocery store – Amazon Go Grocery – in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood of Seattle.
In March it opened a convenience store in west London, its first physical outlet outside North America. As of July 2020, Amazon's physical retail store count reached 89, or 589 including supermarket chain Whole Foods. It bought Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017.
The company’s first Amazon Style outlet is expected to cover almost 2,787 square metres – smaller than most big department stores that usually cover an area of about 9,290 square metres.
The new store aims to make physical shopping a seamless experience by using the latest technology, Amazon said.
Using the Amazon shopping app, customers can scan an item’s QR code to see sizes, colours, ratings and additional product details.
“With the tap of a button, shoppers can add the item to a fitting room or, if they don’t need to try it on, send it directly to the pickup counter,” Ms Vasen said.
“Amazon Style offers more selection than a traditional store of its size … more than double the number of styles … without requiring customers to sift through racks to find the right colour, size and fit.”
Shopping from the fitting room
Amazon Style aims to turn a fitting room into a personalised space for customers.
When customers enter the fitting room, they will find the items they requested while browsing the store, plus additional options chosen based on their preferences, the company said.
Customers can continue shopping from their fitting room without having to leave. Using the touchscreen, they can rate items in real time and request more styles and sizes to be delivered to their fitting room, Ms Vasen said.
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
Electric scooters: some rules to remember
- Riders must be 14-years-old or over
- Wear a protective helmet
- Park the electric scooter in designated parking lots (if any)
- Do not leave electric scooter in locations that obstruct traffic or pedestrians
- Solo riders only, no passengers allowed
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ELIO
Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett
Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina
Rating: 4/5
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
The Sand Castle
Director: Matty Brown
Stars: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea
Rating: 2.5/5
BIGGEST CYBER SECURITY INCIDENTS IN RECENT TIMES
SolarWinds supply chain attack: Came to light in December 2020 but had taken root for several months, compromising major tech companies, governments and its entities
Microsoft Exchange server exploitation: March 2021; attackers used a vulnerability to steal emails
Kaseya attack: July 2021; ransomware hit perpetrated REvil, resulting in severe downtime for more than 1,000 companies
Log4j breach: December 2021; attackers exploited the Java-written code to inflitrate businesses and governments
The Buckingham Murders
Starring: Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ash Tandon, Prabhleen Sandhu
Director: Hansal Mehta
Rating: 4 / 5
PULITZER PRIZE 2020 WINNERS
JOURNALISM
Public Service
Anchorage Daily News in collaboration with ProPublica
Breaking News Reporting
Staff of The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky.
Investigative Reporting
Brian M. Rosenthal of The New York Times
Explanatory Reporting
Staff of The Washington Post
Local Reporting
Staff of The Baltimore Sun
National Reporting
T. Christian Miller, Megan Rose and Robert Faturechi of ProPublica
and
Dominic Gates, Steve Miletich, Mike Baker and Lewis Kamb of The Seattle Times
International Reporting
Staff of The New York Times
Feature Writing
Ben Taub of The New Yorker
Commentary
Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times
Criticism
Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times
Editorial Writing
Jeffery Gerritt of the Palestine (Tx.) Herald-Press
Editorial Cartooning
Barry Blitt, contributor, The New Yorker
Breaking News Photography
Photography Staff of Reuters
Feature Photography
Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin of the Associated Press
Audio Reporting
Staff of This American Life with Molly O’Toole of the Los Angeles Times and Emily Green, freelancer, Vice News for “The Out Crowd”
LETTERS AND DRAMA
Fiction
"The Nickel Boys" by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
Drama
"A Strange Loop" by Michael R. Jackson
History
"Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America" by W. Caleb McDaniel (Oxford University Press)
Biography
"Sontag: Her Life and Work" by Benjamin Moser (Ecco/HarperCollins)
Poetry
"The Tradition" by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press)
General Nonfiction
"The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care" by Anne Boyer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
and
"The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America" by Greg Grandin (Metropolitan Books)
Music
"The Central Park Five" by Anthony Davis, premiered by Long Beach Opera on June 15, 2019
Special Citation
Ida B. Wells
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