Fashion retailers are speeding up deliveries to keep pace with instant-gratification shopping driven by quick-fashion startups, with established players and newer brands taking sharply different approaches.
For example, brands such as Biba and The House of Rare have adopted a more calibrated, infrastructure-led strategy rather than a rapid overhaul of existing store networks. “We’ve been doing this in a very soft way but not necessarily from the same stores because that affects the customer experience,” said Siddharth Bindra, managing director of Biba.
Bindra said using retail stores as fulfilment hubs for rapid delivery creates operational constraints, particularly given store sizes and layouts. “We don’t have very large stores; they are anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 square feet. So that’s not the right efficiency,” he said.
Instead, the brand is evaluating a hub-based model in cities with higher store density, enabling faster deliveries without disrupting in-store operations. “If we do it, it will be through proper hubs in cities where we have four to five stores, where we would start with quick commerce and accelerate it,” he said. This could enable same-day or two- to three-hour deliveries.
The House of Rare, which houses Rare Rabbit (men's urban fashion) and Rareism (women's fashion), is adopting a similar approach, evaluating city-level fulfilment hubs in markets with higher store concentrations to enable faster deliveries while keeping retail outlets focused on walk-in consumers.
The strategy reflects a broader attempt among legacy retailers to balance speed with experience, rather than treating stores as interchangeable logistics nodes. “The eventual goal is the customer, but it creates a lot of difference in the customer experience,” Bindra said, pointing to the trade-offs involved.
Different take
In contrast, some brands are moving more aggressively to integrate stores directly into fulfilment networks.
Libas, an initial public offering (IPO)-bound apparel company, is reworking its operating model to plug its physical retail network into a faster, hyperlocal delivery system.
Earlier, the 12-year-old company followed a more traditional structure. Online orders were largely fulfilled from central warehouses and delivered over a few days, while stores primarily served walk-in customers, with the two channels operating independently.
That is now changing. Libas is using its stores and nearby warehouses as local fulfilment points, allowing it to service orders within a much smaller delivery radius.
“At Libas, the time frame will be approximately 60-90 minutes at the max,” said Bhavay Pruthi, senior vice president, e-commerce and product management.
The rollout has been gradual, starting with select cities and limited catchments, typically within a 7-10km radius, where delivery timelines can be tightly controlled. It has also narrowed the product mix initially to items that are easier to move quickly.
The push comes as consumer expectations around delivery timelines extend beyond groceries into fashion, forcing brands to rethink supply-chain design.
Rise of quick fashion
The urgency to adapt is being shaped by a surge in quick-fashion startups that are attracting investor attention despite heavy cash burn.
The segment has seen a flurry of funding in recent months, with Zilo raising $15.3 million in February led by Peak XV, and Knot securing $5 million in a round led by 12 Flags in December.
It has also evolved rapidly. Quick-commerce platforms such as Zepto, Instamart and Blinkit initially offered a limited range of basic fashion items for last-minute purchases. This has since expanded into a more specialized category, with vertical players offering wider assortments across party, work and occasion wear with rapid delivery timelines.
New entrants are pushing the model further. Klydo, for instance, promises deliveries within 15 to 30 minutes in Bengaluru, while Gen Z-focused offerings such as Newme’s Zip and Snitch Quick are building businesses around near-instant fashion access. Myntra’s rapid commerce division, M-Now, accounted for about 10% of orders in the locations where it was available as of last November.
“This is the new kind of experience that customers are expecting,” Pruthi said.
Libas is working with third-party logistics providers and quick-commerce platforms for the last-mile delivery, while focusing internally on faster picking, packing and order routing. Quick commerce currently accounts for about 2% of its overall sales, with scope to grow as the model scales.
Early results, however, highlight the trade-offs. “We saw very good sell-throughs for e-commerce, but it was cannibalizing existing store sales,” Pruthi said.
There are also limits to what customers are willing to buy through rapid-delivery channels. “Customers do not have the confidence to spend ₹5,000 for a fashion product from a quick-commerce channel,” he said.
To address this, Libas has tightened delivery radii, curated a more suitable product mix, and is testing stores with attached dark-store infrastructure to balance walk-in and online demand.
Experts say these challenges are structural. “If you look at fashion, it’s extremely unpredictable, and if you are a brand across multiple products, it’s a complicated process,” said Devangshu Dutta, founder of management consulting firm Third Eyesight.
While demand for faster deliveries is rising, it remains a small slice of the overall market, with profitability still uncertain due to limited assortments and high fulfilment costs. For traditional retailers, adopting the model requires a fundamental reworking of supply chains that were not built for near-instant delivery, Dutta added.