A new breed of online fashion retailers brings the trial room home

“I didn’t have it in me to step out in peak traffic, so this just made more sense,” Shah said. She ended up keeping two pieces instead of one.

Fashion quick-commerce platforms are pulling the familiar offline trial-room experience into the home. The model—often described as try-and-buy or “living-room trial”—allows customers to order multiple items, assess them instantly, and return unwanted pieces on the spot.

Among early adopters is Bengaluru-based Zilo, where try-and-buy accounts for roughly half of orders. “High return rates hurt the ecosystem not because of the returns themselves, but due to the costs involved in collecting items and sending them back to sellers,” said Bhavik Jhaveri, co-founder of Zilo. “However, hyperlocal fulfilment [like quick commerce] can ease this burden by keeping return trips short and enabling faster restocking.”

The try-and-buy model raises the benchmark of convenience in India’s rapidly growing quick commerce market, which has outpaced all other categories. The explosive growth of 10- to 30-minute grocery delivery has prompted electronics to fashion retailers to embrace the model.

Zilo’s Jhaveri frames try-and-buy as a digital analogue to offline shopping: if customers can try multiple sizes or variants, purchase likelihood rises. If they try only one item and dislike it, they may leave without making a purchase.

The startup, which has raised $4.5 million led by Info Edge and Chiratae Ventures, limits try-and-buy to select stock-keeping units (SKUs). It pays delivery partners fixed rates, so waiting time is baked into costs.

While try-and-buy naturally leads to more returns, “the average order value (AOV) for try-and-buy is fundamentally higher than regular delivery,” said Akshay Gulati, founder of Slikk, which offers a similar service.

The startup, which has so far raised $14.5 million from investors including Lightspeed and Nexus Venture Partners, charges ₹25 for both express and try-and-buy deliveries, and plans to lower the fee over time. Like Zilo, Slikk restricts the service to specific SKUs and pays riders on a fixed-payout model to absorb idle time.

Both Jhaveri and Gulati declined to share specific performance metrics, citing that their companies are in early stages.

Not everyone is convinced. “Try-and-buy is a waste of unit economics; it doesn’t work in PG or shared-accommodation environments, and customer feedback suggests it isn’t a real requirement,” said Sumit Jasoria, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of women’s fast-fashion brand Newme.

Newme operates two dark stores in Bengaluru and three in Delhi, dropping 800–1,000 new styles daily. Rather than deploying try-and-buy infrastructure, it is focusing on retail expansion, with stores designed to double as dark-store fulfilment hubs. Newme has raised $23.6 million from Accel, Fireside and AUM Ventures.

The pain of frequent returns

While business models diverge, fashion consistently sees the highest return rates across e-commerce. That’s because shoppers aren’t just buying a product—they’re buying how it fits, feels, and looks on their body and in their lifestyle. Even with accurate size charts, minor differences in cut, fabric stretch or drape can alter the experience, and colour, texture or sheen often appear different in real life than on screen.

Average online return rates hover in the 30–40% range, though for mature brands this can be 20–25%, said Chirag Taneja, co-founder and CEO of payments enablement platform GoKwik. For a D2C fashion brand, they “can eat into 3–8% of revenue directly, and if returns are frequent, then that becomes 10%+ of margin leakage”, he said.

Every return triggers reverse logistics, inspection, repackaging and discounting—and when items become unsellable, the losses only deepen. Frequent returners cost brands not just product margin, but also wasted acquisition cost and lost lifetime value.

That makes post-purchase experience critical. Typically, 20–40% of revenue comes from repeat customers, and a poor return experience can materially reduce loyalty, said Taneja. “A bad return experience suppresses repeat ordering by 30–50% in the following 12 months for that cohort.”

Taneja, however, says returns shouldn’t be seen as the end of a transaction or a margin drain, but as a continuation of the customer relationship.

One lever to protect both margins and retention is store credit. “Store credit keeps the value inside the brand’s ecosystem, shortens the gap between transactions, and keeps the shopper emotionally connected,” said Taneja. Brands that shift even 15–20% of refund traffic to store credit can “preserve several percentage points of margin over a year”, he added.

Others believe that economics could work selectively, if carefully designed.

“If the feasibility is well-planned, then the higher reverse-logistics costs could pay for itself through higher AOVs,” said Madhur Singhal, managing partner, consumer & internet, Praxis Global Alliance. Early adoption could be among affluent, time-poor shoppers: “Affluent middle-aged customers and working households would adopt this to save time,” said Singhal.

Singhal also sees labour sensitivity remains the biggest constraint—“that is where efficiency will drop”—but the model could still appeal to 10 million shoppers.

The large marketplaces are also testing speed-led fulfilment as a precursor to hyperlocal trials. Myntra launched M-Now this year, promising delivery starting at 30 minutes in select pin codes, AJIO has also piloted AJIO Rush in metros with same-day delivery. Neither initiative currently offers try-and-buy. IPO-bound Meesho has stayed away from quick commerce altogether.

For now, try-and-buy remains a bet led by start-up players rather than the incumbents.