Millennials Increasingly Favor Amazon for Clothes Shopping

Amazon is a great place to shop for just about anything, it seems like. From incredible bargains in used DVDs and video games to books, toys, and electronics, it almost seems like if it can’t be found on Amazon, no one ever really needed it at all.

New word from Slice Intelligence suggests that primacy goes all the way into the apparel realm, particularly for the millennial shopper.

Online apparel revenue has been dominant in the millennial section for two years now, the study found, as millennials accounted for the largest spending in this sector in both 2015 at 35.2 percent and in 2016 at 34.6 percent.

While gains were seen across the spectrum—the baby boomers and the silent generation both saw growth in online apparel buying in that time frame—the millennials were still the rulers of the roost when it came to online clothes shopping.

Though millennials bought in other places, Amazon destroyed its competition handily. The second place finisher was Nordstrom, who saw less than half of Amazon’s volume. Old Navy stepped in third, followed by J Crew and Macy’s to round out the top five.

That’s a staggering sort of development, but one that just illustrates how the retail landscape is changing. Increasingly, shoppers are buying clothing online, a point that only a few years ago might have been inconceivable.

We recently saw one great example of how online clothing retail was done thanks to an ad from 2016 for UPS. UPS offered a look at Zoe, and her pursuit of the perfect prom dress. Zoe shopped online and ordered—and returned—several dresses, with UPS constantly seen walking to her door with boxes upon boxes, and shortly after, a variety of dresses were packed up and shipped back for refunds. Now imagine that development with every shirt, skirt, skort, and Homburg hat ordered online and you’ve got an idea of what apparel shopping could look like.

I admit, I’ve bought a couple shirts online myself—wearing one right now. The process is easy, and when the order doesn’t work out, just send it back. A brisk return policy coupled with a sound delivery mechanism and shopping for clothes online becomes easy, simple…and well worth skipping the store