#Amazon department stores to get high-tech dressing rooms: report

Amazon’s plans to open department stores include the installation of high-tech dressing rooms, as well as an app that tells sales associates which items to pick for customers to try on.

The stores, which are slated to open next year in San Francisco and Columbus, Ohio, are aimed at promoting Amazon’s private-label apparel brands, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday (paywall).

Amazon is testing an app that allows customers to scan the QR codes of the items they want to try on, and then directs store associates to stock dressing rooms with those items, according to the report.

The dressing rooms will come equipped with a touch screen that can recommend additional clothing based on the customers’ selections and tell store employees to bring those items to the fitting rooms, according to the paper.

The idea of opening bricks-and-mortar department stores of about 30,000 square feet is to improve the brand recognition of Amazon’s private-label brands, including Lark & Ro and Goodthreads, according to the report. 

The stores will mostly feature casual apparel for men and women.

The timing couldn’t be better as pandemic weary shoppers rush to bricks and mortar stores again to purchase clothing in person rather than online as they were forced to do for nearly two years.

Amazon declined to comment on the plans. “As a matter of company policy, we do not comment on rumors or speculation,” a spokeswoman said.

The online behemoth is investing in other stores as well, including the expansion of its Amazon Go cashierless convenience stores, of which there are about 30 locations in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. Last year it began selling the Go technology to other retailers.

And it has been investing in its Amazon Fresh grocery store that allow customers to walk out of its grocery store with a shopping cart without stopping to pay a cashier.