Amazon rolls out a host of new perks for Amazon Prime members, including unlimited cloud photo storage and the extension of its two-day free shipping services to other online shopping websites.
America's biggest e-commerce company just made it clear that it is serious about getting its users tied to Amazon Prime.
Various studies conducted by independent research analysts show Amazon Prime subscribers, who pay $99 a year to receive numerous benefits, spend double the amount of money that non-Prime members do.
These benefits include two-day free shipping on more than 20 million items, unlimited video and music streaming, more than 600,000 books to borrow on the Kindle Lending Library and early access to Lightning Deals.
Since introducing Amazon Prime in 2005, which cost $79 at the time, Amazon has always tried to woo fashion retailers to jump in with Amazon Prime. Re/code cites industry sources who said fashion brands Neiman Marcus and Abercrombie & Fitch were among the retailers approached by Amazon who declined, pointing to fears that advertising their products on Amazon could water down their brand image.
"When we go to open a store in the mall, we're very careful about who is around us," says one retail executive. "On Amazon, because they are serving up customized results, our stuff may appear next to some Joe Schmo or third party selling similar goods at half the price."
British retailer AllSaints, however, has taken a leap of faith and started selling its products on its own dedicated storefront on Amazon. Users shopping for AllSaints apparel on the Amazon website will be redirected to the AllSaints website once they have chosen to add an item to their carts.
From there, users can log in to the AllSaints website using their Amazon Prime login information and buy the items they want using the payment methods recorded with Amazon. The Amazon storefront is like prime real estate advertisement on America's biggest shopping website. Amazon does not get any percentage of the sale, but it takes a small fee from AllSaints for every user on Amazon clicking through to the AllSaints website.
AllSaints will be processing all the orders and will be offering next-day shipping instead of the usual two-day shipping offered on Amazon Prime.
Allaying fears that Amazon could eventually grow so big in the $174 billion fashion industry, Amazon vice president of seller services Tom Taylor says Amazon does not have an idea of what items were purchased because it only retains information about the amount of purchase and sends the customer's name and email address to the retailer.
Richard Ascott, global digital chief at AllSaints, says the AllSaints brand is "precious enough that you wouldn't want to give it away and let Amazon put it in its own brown boxes."
"But it's robust enough that it could stand up to the worry that these guys might one day use the data to build a competitor to AllSaints," Ascott says.
Meanwhile, on the consumer side, Amazon has also introduced unlimited cloud photo storage for all Amazon Prime subscribers. For new members, it is an irresistible offer that is hard to turn down, especially on top of the additional benefits already offered by Amazon. For existing subscribers, which number around 20 million, unlimited photo storage is an added value that they don't have to pay additional fees for.
It's clear that Amazon is hell-bent on getting people to use Amazon Prime. The move is all part of CEO Jeff Bezos' strategy to give away things for free (or almost free) to get users to buy more things on Amazon, whether it is toothpaste or branded clothing they want to get.
