Supermarket chain Sainsbury's is to sell its fashion range to online customers for the first time as part of a trial scheme due to launch in August.
The retailer's Tu brand is the country's seventh largest clothing retailer with 7.5 million customers and sales of around £750 million last year.
It will begin its test of the online market with a pilot scheme selling products to an invited group of customers in the Midlands.
The market is already fiercely competitive, with store and online-based players including Next alongside dedicated internet operators such as Very.
However, Sainsbury's non-food trading director James Brown said the firm's fashion unit had doubled its design team, invested in the quality of its clothing and relaunched its Tu brand last year.
Mr Brown added: "Now's the right time to explore the online channel as a complement to our store business."
Sainsbury's online director Robbie Feather added that the pilot would allow the retailer "to work with a group of customers to build the right customer experience."
Sainsbury's said it will offer customers involved in the test a bespoke website and mixture of click and collect and home delivery services.
The retailer, which first began selling clothes in 1994, said orders would be handled from its clothing depot in Bedford, which also serves 400 stores.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article