Amazon is well known for testing any number of initiatives...and just as quickly ending those tests when they didn’t work out. They’ve done it with hardware, ordering processes and pricing strategies, Now they are doing it with private label brands.
The e-commerce giant said last month it would be eliminating 27 of its 30 private labels across its apparel and home offerings, signaling that they turned out to be more work than the payoff they were providing. The brands that will remain will be focused on opening price point items like t-shirts and socks under its Amazon Basics and Amazon Essentials.
“We always make decisions based on what our customers want, and we’ve learned that customers seek out our biggest brands – like Amazon Basics and Amazon Essentials – for great value with high-quality products at great price points,” Matt Taddy, vice president of Amazon Private Brands, told the online newsletter Retail Dive.
The website said that in a 2019 legal filing Amazon said it had about 158,000 private label items across 43 brands for sale on its site. It’s believed it had already started the cutting-back process prior to this summer but the recent announcement seems to be the largest one it has initiated. One published report said this cut-back includes two of its big furniture brands, Rivet and Stone & Barn.
Amazon says it will continue to offer private labels in both home and apparel but the retreat clearly indicates that consumers were not going on Amazon for fashion goods and they continue to choose it more so for basics. Given the shivers that went up and down both brands that placed product on Amazon and those that had stayed off the site when these brands first launched, this news has to be greeted with a sense of relief.
The urban legend is that Jeff Bezos chose the name Amazon to reflect the length of the famous river, symbolizing an endless supply of product offerings. Apparently that river does dry up eventually.