The Saks Fifth Avenue parent is preparing to unwind its high-profile digital tie-up with Amazon, pulling its luxury storefront off the tech giant’s marketplace after a short and turbulent run. The move comes as Saks Global navigates Chapter 11 bankruptcy and a deepening legal and financial clash with its former e-commerce ally, raising fresh questions about how luxury brands should balance reach with control online.
By stepping back from Amazon’s platform, Saks is betting that its future lies in driving shoppers directly to its own channels rather than relying on a partner that now regards its investment in the retailer as effectively worthless. The decision marks a sharp turn in a relationship that once promised to fuse high fashion with big-tech logistics and data.
The partnership that promised a luxury–tech fusion
When Saks and Amazon first linked arms, the pitch was simple: pair a storied luxury name with the scale and convenience of one of the world’s biggest online marketplaces. The collaboration grew out of Amazon’s $475 m commitment to Saks in 2024, a deal that was framed as a way to modernize the retailer’s digital capabilities while giving Amazon a stronger foothold in high-end fashion. The companies agreed to build a dedicated “Saks on Amazon” experience, effectively carving out a luxury enclave inside Amazon’s vast marketplace.
That investment, described as $475 million, was meant to fund technology, logistics and marketing that could bring Saks’ assortment to a broader audience without diluting its brand. The Saks on Amazon storefront was positioned as a curated space where labels that typically live on Fifth Avenue could coexist with Prime shipping and one-click checkout, a hybrid that many in the industry saw as a test case for how luxury and mass e-commerce might coexist.
Why Saks is pulling the plug
The reality of the partnership appears to have fallen short of those ambitions. A person familiar with the arrangement has said that the Saks on Amazon storefront saw limited brand participation, a critical weakness for a marketplace that depends on breadth and depth of offerings to attract shoppers. Without a robust roster of labels willing to sit alongside mass-market goods, the storefront struggled to become a must-visit destination for luxury customers. For Saks, that raised uncomfortable questions about whether the presence on Amazon was truly enhancing its image or simply parking its logo in a crowded digital mall.
According to a source cited in coverage of the decision, Saks now believes it can better serve its long-term interests by focusing on driving traffic to its own site and stores rather than sharing customers with a partner that controls the broader shopping environment. The decision to end the e-commerce partnership, relayed by a person with direct knowledge of the talks, underscores a strategic pivot away from third-party platforms and toward the retailer’s proprietary ecosystem, where it can control pricing, presentation and data without compromise.
Bankruptcy, legal fights and a soured investment
The unraveling of the digital alliance is happening against a fraught financial backdrop for Saks Global. The company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a move that has drawn Amazon directly into court as a creditor and former strategic partner. Amazon has objected to Saks Global’s proposed bankruptcy financing, arguing that the structure could disadvantage creditors and undermine the value of its earlier investment. In a filing, Amazon has gone so far as to say that its stake in Saks Global is now effectively worthless, a stark reversal from the optimism that surrounded the $475 million deal.
The legal battle has been amplified by the fact that Saks Global is also the parent of Neiman Marcus, another marquee name in American luxury retail that has itself been through restructuring. A short video summary of the dispute describes Amazon as being in a legal fight with the parent company over the Chapter 11 process, highlighting how quickly a strategic partnership can morph into an adversarial courtroom relationship. Against that backdrop, the decision to unwind the e-commerce collaboration looks less like a tactical tweak and more like the inevitable fallout from a partnership that has been overtaken by financial distress and mistrust.
Inside the “Saks on Amazon” experiment
From the outset, the Saks on Amazon initiative was framed as a way to bring high-end brands into a controlled corner of Amazon’s marketplace, with Saks acting as curator and gatekeeper. The storefront was built as part of a broader e-commerce agreement between the two companies, with Amazon.com, listed as AMZN, providing the digital infrastructure and Saks Global supplying the merchandise and brand relationships. The idea was that a shopper browsing for everyday items could seamlessly click into a more rarefied environment, with Saks’ name acting as a signal of authenticity and taste.
Yet the storefront’s performance appears to have been hampered by reluctance from key labels to participate, as well as by the inherent tension between luxury positioning and Amazon’s discount-driven reputation. Reporting on the decision to end the deal notes that The Saks on Amazon space never attracted the breadth of brands needed to make it a destination in its own right. Without that critical mass, the experiment struggled to justify its complexity, especially as Saks Global’s financial situation deteriorated and management looked for ways to simplify operations.
What the split means for luxury e-commerce
The collapse of the partnership is a cautionary tale for other high-end retailers weighing whether to lean on mass platforms for growth. Luxury brands have long worried that appearing on marketplaces could erode their aura of exclusivity, and the limited participation in the Saks on Amazon storefront suggests those concerns remain potent. The decision by Saks Global to walk away from the arrangement, even as it restructures in court, signals that control over brand environment and customer data can outweigh the lure of incremental traffic from a giant like Amazon.
At the same time, the episode underscores how intertwined strategy and capital have become in modern retail. Amazon’s initial $475 million investment was not just a financial bet but a way to secure a role as technology and logistics provider to Saks’ broader portfolio, including when Saks acquired Neiman Marcus and looked to offer technology and logistics expertise across the combined business. With that investment now written down and the e-commerce partnership ending, both sides are left to reassess how, and whether, big tech and luxury retail can collaborate without one side feeling it has given up too much.
