endless.com : many good reasons to experiment

Amazon recently launched endless.com, the first time the online retailer has created a separate Web address for one its product lines: shoes and handbags

Interesting, I thought to myself and here are 3 key reasons why this is a great move:
1. Market Size and Growth (From e-commerce news): In 2002, online footwear sales, at $954 million, was about one-fifth the size of the $4.4 billion online apparel business, according to Forrester Research. Last year, footwear had surged to $2.9 billion, or about one-third the size of the $9.6 billion sold in apparel. There is more growth ahead. Online shoe sales are projected to increase 22 percent in 2007 to $3.5 billion.

This is not a market to take lightly, is it!

2. Customer Demographic: I am not saying Amazon's female shoppers wouldn't shop for their shoes and handbags on the site, but the product line can definitely do with unique, independent marketing strategy and tactics. By Amazon not co-branding or endorsing it, endless stands on its own in the customer's eye, not being tinted by either the "book-seller" association (which in my opinion is antiquated) or more importantly "the site that sells everything" association.

3. Learnings in Customer Experience: Customers swear by Amazon's customer experience on it's site and order fulfillment. (You don't get to be the highest ever rated ASCI service provider in customer satisfaction just like that!). This is the kind of lock-in you want this fickle "competitor is a click-away" world. But there's a huge disadvantage, isn't there: how do you change. Well, experiments at the margin like endless will allow Amazon to get customer feedback in a real environment and possibly plug it back to the main service. (For those who haven't checked out endless even after reading so far, check it out to know what I am talking about, you can't see a trace of Amazon on the site)

So, will we get more endless'es from Amazon; I wouldn't bet on it, not on too many at the same time anyway