SEATTLE – In its quest to build out its fashion business, Amazon.com may disrupt the world of TV talk shows, too – with a nightly live show dedicated to fashion and beauty.
The 30-minute show, dubbed “Style Code Live,” launches Tuesday night. It will stream live Monday through Thursday, and on Fridays it will have a “best of” compilation. It’s the first time the Seattle tech giant is producing a live daily show.
Amazon generally reserves its video content produced by its Amazon Studios unit as a perk for the shoppers who pay $99 a year for Amazon Prime. But “Style Code Live” will be accessible to anyone who streams it from a page on Amazon’s website.
It will also let the audience interact via live chat and, notably, make it easy for them to shop on Amazon’s website through a “Style Carousel,” which dynamically updates throughout the show.
It’s the second Amazon show to be offered free even to non-Prime members. Last month, it launched “The Fashion Fund,” a weekly, ad-supported show also endowed with a retail component.
Both “Style Code Live” and “The Fashion Fund” come in the midst of what seems to be a big ramp of Amazon’s fashion business. The company has opened a 40,000-square-foot photo and video studio in Brooklyn’s hip Williamsburg neighborhood and a similar one in London.
Amazon also has been on a hiring binge for an emerging private label fashion business. In job postings, it calls the private label initiative “a strategic priority” for its huge softlines category.
A report by Cowen, an equity research firm, predicts that Amazon will surpass Macy’s as the No. 1 retailer of apparel by next year. In 2020, fashion may account for $52 billion in sales both from Amazon and from third-party retailers using its platform, up from $16 billion in 2015, according to Cowen.
The “Style Code Live” show will be hosted by ABC News correspondent Rachel Smith, former MTV host Lyndsey Rodrigues, and TV and Broadway actor Frankie J. Grande.
Tuesday’s premiere show will feature fashion blogger Danielle Bernstein. On Wednesday, singer-songwriter Meghan Trainor, and the dos and don’ts of mixing prints are on the schedule. On Thursday the hosts will talk about jumpsuits and interview “The Americans” co-star Keri Russell.
Amazon says that the show is, as of now, best viewed on a desktop computer.
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