Dive Brief:
-
Amazon’s live fashion program, Style Code, has been canceled 15 months after its debut, the New York Post reports. Its social media accounts were also suspended and employees were abruptly given notice, according to the report.
-
Style Code was a combination of content and shoppability, a digital update of sorts of television-based home shopping programs like HSN and QVC.
-
The show ran live weekday evenings, with a best-of show on Fridays and featured Lyndsey Rodrigues (who has hosted MTV’s Total Request Live), Rachel Smith (a correspondent for ABC News for Good Morning America and Nightline) and Frankie Grande (a television personality and theater actor known for appearing on CBS’s Big Brother reality show and the Broadway musical Rock of Ages).
Dive Insight:
Amazon usually reserves its programming for its Prime members, but Style Code Live was free to anyone, part of the e-retail giant’s aggressive push into the apparel space. The show was among the most recent of Amazon’s moves to help put it on the fashion map; the company also was a sponsor of the 2012 Costume Institute Benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, and three years later it was the marquee sponsor of the first New York Fashion Week for men.
“Our customers love fashion, and have wanted a place to keep up with new trends and get expert tips. We created Style Code Live for them, and we are just getting started with this show,” Style Code Live chief Munira Rahemtulla said in a statement last year.
Unlike network or cable shows, streaming services don’t have to reveal viewership numbers, but presumably the show wasn’t grabbing the attention of its target audience. About a year ago, the Post had also reported that crafts maven Martha Stewart, who last year moved her online store from eBay to Handmade at Amazon, was also slated to host her own show on Amazon Prime, but there’s no sign that was in the works.
Amazon didn’t immediately return Retail Dive’s request for comment on the status of either Style Code or Stewart’s proposed show.
