Zudio's secret is a price it won't play with
Case study · By Deepakk Bansal, Director · October 2026 · 6 min read
- A stable price is a promise; Zudio's owner refuses to use it as a lever for a slow week
- Small trial runs and quick repeats can do the job markdowns usually do
- Cheaper stores, placed close together, let a chain grow into smaller towns
- The cost is slower growth in older stores, so judge a town, not one shop
A rule worth reading twice
In September 2026, Trent told the stock exchanges that Zudio, its value-fashion chain, had crossed 1,000 stores 1. The brand launched in 2016. Ten years on, it is in over 300 cities and, the company says, has served more than 100 million customers 1.
Zudio at ten
As Trent reported in September 2026, ten years after the first store
There are many ways to explain a run like that. The most useful one for anyone who runs shops sits in a single sentence of Trent's results presentation, the kind most readers skip. Its pricing, the company says, "is not used as a short-term demand management lever" 2.
Read that as a store manager. In a slow week, a price cut is the obvious tool. Trent says it will not use price that way. This article looks at what that choice does, what has to be true for it to work, and where it starts to cost.
How fast it grew
First, the scale. Zudio had 233 stores at the end of March 2022. By March 2026 it had 963, six of them in the UAE 2. In the year to March 2026 alone, Trent opened 212 Zudio stores 2.
Four times the stores in four years
Zudio stores at the end of each financial year (March), including stores inside Star and in the UAE
Where those stores went matters as much as how many. In that year, over 80% of new Zudio stores opened in Tier II and III cities and in what Trent calls "peripheral new growth micro-markets" 2: in plain words, smaller cities and the growing edges of towns rather than the centres of the metros.
The price is the promise
In 2019, when the chain was still young, Bloomberg described Zudio as a mass-market chain "where nothing costs more than $15" 3. The exact ceiling matters less than the idea behind it: a shopper walks in with a fair sense of what she will pay.
"Our pricing has remained stable and is not used as a short-term demand management lever."
Trent links this directly to its brands. It says a stable price architecture, steady efficiencies and a relatively stable margin over time "would yield better salience for our brands" 2. Salience simply means being the name that comes to mind first. Trade coverage of Zudio's growth makes the same point from outside: the brand grew by being present in more neighbourhoods, "instead of heavy discounting and heavy marketing spending" 4. One recent Zudio campaign shown in Trent's results ran on organic channels only 2.
Two ways to use a price
Left, for contrast: price used as a lever. Right: what Trent says it does, and how trade coverage describes Zudio's growth
Why might this work? Our reading is simple. A shopper who expects a sale learns to wait for it, so frequent discounting can teach customers to buy less at full price. A shopper who trusts that the price is fair has less reason to wait. That is our view, not something Trent claims, but it fits the loop below.
Why a steady price can keep paying
Our reading of how steady prices could feed the rest of the model
Speed does the job a sale usually does
If a retailer will not lean on price, it needs another way to deal with clothes that do not sell. The answer Trent has described is to make fewer big bets and correct them faster.
Trent sells a portfolio of its own brands, direct to the customer 2. So it designs the product, sets the price and sees every sale. In 2019 Bloomberg reported how the company worked across its fashion stores: once a month it turned a trend spotted on Instagram or a foreign catwalk into a limited run in select stores in 12 days 3. If the product did well it went into a full run, which usually took 60 days from sketch to shelf, and Noel Tata said the company was finding it could cut that to 40 days by holding fabric stock itself 3. "Because we don't have a long supply chain," he said, "we are able to respond to the trends much faster" 3.
From a trend to the shelf
How Trent described its process to Bloomberg in 2019, across its fashion stores
In our view this is the real substitute for the end-of-season sale. A small trial run shows what sells before the big order is placed. The winners get repeated; the misses were only ever a small batch.
Trent also keeps control of the shop floor. It says it prefers "to retain operating control of our stores and the ownership of merchandise at all times", and that its preferred model is company-operated stores 2. When one company owns the design, the stock and the store, the price on the tag is the price it chose.
A cheaper box, in more places
The second half of the model is the store itself. In FY25 Trent put about Rs 3-4 crore into opening a new Zudio store, counting capital expenditure, deposits and stock. A new Westside, its older and more upmarket chain, took Rs 8-9 crore 4. A Zudio is typically around 7,000 to 12,000 square feet 4.
A Zudio costs half as much or less to open as a Westside
Capital to open one new store in FY25: capital expenditure, deposits and stock, in Rs crore
A store that costs half as much or less to open lets a chain open more stores with the same money, and makes a poor site choice cheaper to live with. Trent has also worked to make some costs move with sales: it describes "aligning certain of the costs to be variable alongside store revenues", including some store rents and fees with "variable payout structures" 2.
Technology helps too. Trent says putting RFID (small radio tags on the merchandise) across its network has boosted productivity in the supply chain and in stores, and helped it contain the growth in staff costs 2.
Then there is density. Trent says it is selectively increasing "the density of our presence across key markets", and that in many cases it is starting to see "higher cluster level revenues & profitability" 2. As of 2024, Zudio was reported to be sold only in its own stores, with no plan to put it on Tata's shopping app Neu 5.
The cost of the model
None of this is free, and the most useful part of the story is in the slowing numbers.
Like-for-like growth (sales growth from stores open long enough to compare with last year) was in double digits for Trent's fashion stores in FY25, then slowed to mid-single digits in the last quarter of that year 6. For FY26 as a whole it was in the low single digits 2. On Business Standard's calculation, Trent's annualised revenue per square foot fell 7% year on year in that quarter 6.
Growing in new towns, slower in old stores
Trent's own account of FY26
Trent's explanation is that it is choosing to grow whole markets, not to protect each store's comparison with its own past: it is "primarily seeking to pursue revenue growth across comparative micro-markets" 2. It also says newer markets take two to three years to become relevant 2. Our reading: a chain opening over two hundred stores a year, most of them in newer markets, will carry many young stores that have not come good yet, and some new stores will draw shoppers from older ones nearby.
The model also asks a great deal before it pays: its own designers and suppliers, enough stores to make small trial runs worth doing, and enough capital to keep opening through a slow year. Trent as a whole still grew revenue 18% to Rs 19,701 crore in FY26 7. Few retailers have that behind them. What others can borrow is the discipline, not the scale.
What to do on Monday
- Fix your price points and keep them. Choose a small number of prices for each category and hold them for the season, so a regular customer can tell a friend what something costs.
- Do not use price to fix a slow week. When sales drop, check the stock on the floor, the sizes on the rail and who is on the roster before you reach for a discount.
- Buy small, then buy again. Put a new line into a few stores first, read the sell-through (the share of stock that sold) after two weeks, and give the next order to the winners.
- Judge a town, not just a store. When you open near your own store, measure the two together against last year, so a healthy new store is not blamed for its neighbour's dip.
- Ask what each rupee of fit-out buys. Before signing a new store, compare what the fit-out will cost with the sales it must bring in, and look for rent that moves with those sales.
- Zudio crosses 1,000-store milestone in 10 yrs, expands to 300 cities, Business Standard (PTI), 2026-09.
- Investor Presentation Q4FY26, Trent Limited, 2026-04.
- Zara's Indian partner is building its own cheaper fashion chain, Al Jazeera (Bloomberg), 2019-06.
- Tata's Trent accelerates retail expansions, adds over 280 stores for Westside, Zudio in FY25, Storyboard18, 2025-06.
- Tata Digital reportedly in talks to develop budget fashion line, Apparel Resources, 2024.
- High valuations, moderating growth warrant caution for Trent investors, Business Standard, 2025-04.
- Trent revenue tops Rs 19,700 crore in FY26; Zudio-led expansion drives scale, Storyboard18, 2026-04.