E-Commerce
fromEntrepreneur
4 days agoHow to Turn $850 Billion in Retail Returns Into Protected Profit
Treat returns as a predictable workflow with defined intake, triage, and fast evaluation to protect margins and reduce warehouse burden.
Brandon Batchelor, Director of Sales & Strategic Partnerships at ReadyCloud, the shipping, returns and growth marketing e-commerce CRM Suite I've seen more returns than most people ever will. Why? Because I head up the sales division at a company that makes one of the more popular returns solutions for enterprise sellers on Shopify and other platforms. With that in mind, let's discuss something many big retail brands overlook: the post-purchase experience.
In the apparel industry, returns quietly erase margin, distort customer acquisition cost (CAC) and starve lifetime value (LTV). Most apparel companies treat returns as a warehouse problem. They're not. Returns are created upstream by the promises made in ads, by clarity on product pages, by the product itself and by whether reviews help shoppers choose the right size. In a previous role at an outdoor/apparel brand, board-level accountability forced us to run returns from the marketing cockpit.