AMZN and the Retail Rainforest: 1Q26 Edition

Research evidence excerpt

AMZN and the Retail Rainforest: 1Q26 Edition

Industry Update Equity Research

AMZN Is the U.S. Apparel Leader

While AMZN clearly carries a very wide range of products, over time, the company has become a

meaningful player in the Softlines market. We estimate AMZN grew their clothing & footwear business

at a DD-TD% from 2011 to 2021; however, as 1) the marketplace quickly expanded and reached a

relatively high penetration of its TAM, 2) e-commerce competitors emerged/scaled and 3) consumers

have come under macroeconomic pressure—growth has moderated. We estimate AMZN's clothing &

footwear business grew +8% in 2025 to $73B. While decelerating (~150bps) YoY, this still represents

a market share gain, speaking to the fact that more Amazon shoppers are looking to the platform for

their apparel & footwear needs. Case in point, we estimate that Amazon now has 43% market share in

the online apparel and footwear market in the US.

Zooming in on the categories, AMZN's Apparel sales have seen an impressive +16% CAGR over the last

6 years and made up $65B of the total $73B in Softlines purchases. At the same time, Footwear has

grown at a +13% CAGR, although this has been marked by a slowdown in growth over the past few

years (at just +MSD-HSD).

Looking out, we estimate that AMZN will grow their Softlines business +7% in 2026E (to roughly

$78B), a ~100bps deceleration from 2025 as we anticipate macro uncertainty and an increase in

competition will continue to pressure growth. That said, considering our expectations for an uncertain

macro affecting the overall Softlines space in 2025, this GMV assumption would drive ~200bps of

Softlines share gains for AMZN to record online share (44.5%) and overall share (13.2%).

Exhibit 1 - AMZN Estimated Apparel & Footwear GMV by Year ($MMs)