Chico’s Teams Up With Amazon For Apparel Sales

As Amazon adds established clothing brands to its platform, Chico’s FAS will become one of the latest companies to sell its merchandise on the eCommerce retailer’s site. The company’s brands include Chico’s, White House Black Market and Soma, CNBC reported.

“Chico’s FAS will be one of the few vertically integrated specialty retailers with Prime eligibility on Amazon.com, which is a testament to the strength of our iconic brands and their growth potential,” Chico’s FAS CEO and President Shelley Broader said in an announcement.

Beginning in the middle of May, Amazon shoppers will have access to some of the company’s clothing and accessories, including jewelry, no-iron shirts and its athleisure line. The company said it will still make marketing, pricing and promotions decisions. If all goes well, Chico’s may sell items from its White House Black Market and Soma brands “as the new business channel gains traction.”

The news comes after baby product company Carter’s designed a special clothing line that was sold exclusively to Amazon’s 79 million Prime members for last year’s Prime Day. The eCommerce retailer started selling Carter’s Simple Joys collection in 2017. Carter’s already has deals with Walmart and Target, but the retailer’s move of creating a special line of clothing just for Amazon officially brought the eCommerce giant into the brick-and-mortar competition world.

Carter’s President, Brian Lynch, shared how this strategic move would help better capture today’s tech-infused shopping experiences: “It’s the first brand we’ve done that’s 100 percent focused on the digital experience for digitally savvy millennials and a more affluent Prime customer.”

The news comes about a year after Cowen and Company estimated that consumers are buying 21 percent of their wearable items online. According to a different retail research group, 20 percent is the magic number when it comes to identifying the tipping point of goods going fully digital.