Amazon has been quietly registering trademarks for different clothing lines: Franklin & Freeman, Franklin Tailored, James & Erin, Lark & Ro, North Eleven, Scout + Ro and Society New York.
While some of them are yet to be granted, and Franklin Tailored has been opposed by another trademark holder, as many as 1,800 items of clothing advertised under these banners are already on Amazon’s own shelves.
If you do a bit of digging, you’ll see that the clothes are being created with the MyHabit flash sale website it launched in 2011, “created by Amazon in response to customers’ desires to shop intelligently from a selection of great brands.”
And that includes its own apparel brands, it now appears.
Presumably, unlike its tech hardware products, the company assumed that nobody wanted to wear an Amazon-approved uniform to go about their day.
But Amazon already makes a 40 percent margin on apparel, according to data crunched by Quartz, making it much more lucrative for the company than other areas.
That may also be because the company has opted to make its good in China, where labor costs are cheap.
It’s even offering suits for around $250, including a 40 percent margin, that’s a pretty damn cheap suit.
It doesn’t look like Amazon is favoring its own lines in search results but it’s also not making it exactly clear that you’re buying from Amazon either.
➤ Amazon Quietly Rolls Out Private Label Fashions [WWD via Engadget]
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