Amazon Reportedly Slashing Majority of Its Private Label Clothing Lines
Amazon is reportedly planning to scale back its in-house brands amidst the possibility of an FTC antitrust lawsuit. The Wall Street Journal has revealed that the company intends to discontinue 27 out of its 30 clothing brands and all of its private-label furniture lines. While the extent of the cuts in other areas remains uncertain, it seems that the Amazon Basics brand will largely remain unaffected. The retailer stated that it aims to remove products that are not appealing to customers.
Among the Amazon clothing brands reportedly being discontinued are Lark & Ro, Daily Ritual and Goodthreads. (Amazon Essentials, Amazon Collection, and Amazon Aware will reportedly remain.) Meanwhile, the retailer will reportedly drop the Rivet and Stone & Beam furniture brands once their current inventory runs out. “We always make decisions based on what our customers want, and we’ve learned that customers look to our biggest brands — like Amazon Basics and Amazon Essentials — for a great value for high-quality products at a great price,” Matt Taddy, head of Amazon Private Brands, said in a statement to the WSJ.
While Amazon didn’t specifically link the changes to the expected FTC lawsuit, the timing doesn’t appear to be a coincidence. Company representatives are said to be sitting next week with FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan and Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. The chat is considered a “last rite of passage,” giving the company one last chance to get the government agency to back down before a filing decision. The long-awaited lawsuit culminates a four-year investigation into the company’s alleged anti-competitive practices. It also has a separate FTC lawsuit related to defrauding customers of Prime subscriptions.
Part of the FTC’s interest is reportedly in Amazon’s relationships with third-party sellers, which has long focused on antitrust. The WSJ reported in 2020 that Amazon employees used internal information about third-party sellers to create their own products. This led to the company agreeing to stop listing its own brands in search results, making it harder to sell them.
