Amazon Shutting Down Fashion Website Endless.com

Amazon started telling consumers today, who visit Endless.com, that it will be shutting down next week.

The site, which sells high-end clothing, shoes, handbags, jewelry and watches, will become a part of Amazon.com/Fashion, according to a statement that appeared on the front page of the site.

Reuters, which first reported the news, said Amazon launched Endless.com in 2007, and that the closure is part of a big push by Amazon to expand further into fashion and apparel this year.

In an recent interview with AllThingsD, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos said he is spending a lot of time thinking about the apparel, and that its clothing business was getting “very exciting.”

“I think there’s a tremendous amount of invention going on there, especially in the Web presentation of apparel,” he said.

A spokesperson confirmed that the transition was taking place and said that other non-Amazon branded fashion properties, such as Zappos or Shopbop, would not be affected.

“Between Amazon, Shopbop and Zappos, our customers have easy access to an assortment of quality brands and a variety of shopping experiences for any fashion need, so we are shifting our Endless business to Amazon in order to focus on the Amazon Fashion experience,” the spokesperson said.

Amazon also operates MyHabit.com, a fashion site that sells items at a discount.

Apparel is one of the fastest growing categories online, according to eMarketer, which is predicting that the category will grow by 20 percent to $40.9 billion this year, up from $34.2 billion in 2011.

On the Web site, Amazon billed the changes as “exciting news.”

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik