Australia's Try-On Fee: Would You Pay To Use Dressing Rooms?

Would you pay to try on clothes in-store?

A handful of struggling Australian boutiques sure hopes so.

The Sydney Morning Herald writes that thanks to a 4.8 percent drop in clothing and footwear sales, retailers there have come up with a series of new tactics to encourage customers to buy off the rack and not online (for a presumably lower price)...including a fitting room fee, which is then refunded upon purchase.

And according to News.com.au, that fee could be as much as $50, the amount some ski shops are charging to try on boots.

Designer Clare Press explained why it's come to this, telling the Herald, ''As a designer with one store, we have become a destination so you have to work hard as customers are no longer going to walk past and buy a dress on a whim.''

The try-on-clothes-for-a-charge concept could ostensibly work in the customers' favor -- shorter dressing room lines, only having to browse the shelves along with serious shoppers...but we're not sure how, in the end, it'll help bring in that much more dough.

What do you think?

Quick Poll

Fitting room fee:

GREAT idea! They should bring it to the U.S.

TERRIBLE idea! Total lose-lose situation.

Unsure.

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(Via Styleite)

Comments

[magwildwood]

03:22 PM on 04/20/2011

I'm very tall so have to try everything on to make it fits. If I had to pay to try things on I wouldn't bother shopping there in fear of nothing fitting. It's depressing as it it to try on a bunch of clothes and nothing fits right and now you get to pay for it.... No, thank you!

[lyric220]

10:27 AM on 04/20/2011

this is a horrifying idea.

[way2sunny]

10:03 AM on 04/20/2011

Do they take returns? Because I would just buy it, take it home (or the nearest public bathroom) and try it on, then return it if it didn't fit. People will be offended by this, and more likely to just skip the store completely. Bad idea.

[Graceless]

04:22 AM on 04/20/2011

Basic retail operational math is more foot traffic equals more opportunity for sales (this should be obvious to *everyone on the planet*). In order to compete with online sales, a retail operation first needs to drive foot traffic into their stores and last time I checked it was pretty hard to generate sales out of a brick and mortar without, you know, people to sell to.

There is absolutely no way I'd walk into a shop that required me to put a non-refundable deposit down on anything I was interested in, let alone purchase something from them, and I know that I'm certainly not in the minority.

There is absolutely no way to financially justify the statement that more money is to be made via fees than to simply, wait for it, provide basic customer service. If nine out of ten customers just want to try on the fancy dress, how on earth is it bad business to let them try the damn dress on? I worked for years in retail and the number of customers who came back later to buy something they had previously tried on was staggering. Bread and butter, really.

So if the plan was to encourage people to not bother walking into the shops in the first place...I guess congratulations are in order. They'll be able to go to business school, what with all the free time they'll soon have.

[Bellanova]

01:07 AM on 04/20/2011

No.

[Reticent2]

07:13 PM on 04/19/2011

No- but I'd pay for helpful, smart, kind service people who check their hang overs, snottiness, and dismissiveness at the door before work.

[way2sunny]

10:06 AM on 04/20/2011

I so agree with you. Certain stores seem to make that part of the job description, which will make me just turn around and leave even if I want to buy something,

[BittyBittyChangChang]

04:27 PM on 04/19/2011

NO WAY would I pay just to try on clothes...what are they smoking down under? Is there no end to nickle and diming of consumers -- first banks charging to use a human tellers, then airlines charging for everything short of breathing and now this? What's next, restaurants charging to use a menu?

[style-delights]

10:31 PM on 04/18/2011

This the worst profit-building idea in marketing!!! It is a well known fact that when people (specially women) touch and feel and try a merchandise, they are more inclined to buy it. If the stores discourage the customers to "feel" the product, they are cutting down the potential buyers numbers by a huge margin! Not worth the quick bucks they plan to make by this stupid "fitting-room-fee" idea!
http://sty­le-delight­s.blogspot­.com/

[logic-a-go-go]

08:45 PM on 04/18/2011

This will ultimately cost them in huge numbers of returns for wrong sizes. This idea was cooked up by some greedy executive who does not understand how females shop. There is no way anyone I know would pay to try on clothing. EVER! Ridiculous.

[amtheone]

06:09 PM on 04/19/2011

I agree logic, I would buy, try on at home and return what I don't like.

[Mischka Lauren]

07:24 PM on 04/18/2011

No.

[Retrofuturistic]

07:10 PM on 04/18/2011

Have you ever gone to Chico's? They have no mirrors in the dressing rooms because they want people to come out and look into a public mirror (so the clerks can comment on how they look and persuade them to buy). Needless to say, I stopped shopping there too....

I am tired, as a customer, of jumping through the corporations' hoops. I figure I can always cut up my old clothes and make new ones, if necessary.

[way2sunny]

10:20 AM on 04/20/2011

It's creepy, you're expected to go parade around so the salespeople can flatter you and try to sell you more stuff, which I find phony and unpleasant. Also watch out for the "slimming" mirrors at BCBG and Ann Taylor!

[Retrofuturistic]

07:07 PM on 04/18/2011

No way. I simply won't pay it. I don't need their clothing that badly.

[Teju]

05:18 PM on 04/18/2011

HAHA, they're smoking crack if they think this will work.

[TheBlondeRaven]

04:07 PM on 04/18/2011

I do almost all my clothes shopping online so I don't have to walk around in annoying stores.

[Bafun]

05:52 PM on 04/18/2011

So you don't need to try. Good. If they don't fit? are you going to the annoying post office to return them?

[TheBlondeRaven]

05:54 PM on 04/18/2011

Mail office is next door to me...Online returns are often easier than store returns.

[alsm9]

03:41 PM on 04/18/2011

NO! Any store charging me to try on clothes simply would lose my business all together.

[Bafun]

04:05 PM on 04/18/2011

If ALL stores make the same? Do you stop to buy clothes?

As the airlines did. At first one charged the 2nd bag. You could fly an other one. Now all charge the same. Well, you pay.. or you don't fly. Wait they will soon charge for the 1st bag and you will pay.

[LogicCircuit]

08:36 PM on 04/18/2011

Well, most women will probably opt for buying something, trying it at home and returning it back to the store if they don't like it. After if causes enough chaos, the shops will stop this nonsense.

Besides, there aren't that many airlines and sometimes some of them might even belong to the same corporation, so it's easy for them to ignore antitrust laws.

Boutique shopping is not a necessity like flying, we don't actually have to give in.