It’s not too early to prepare for holiday returns

While most of us are still planning final summer vacations and enjoying the next couple of weeks before herding the kids off to school, there are retail industry professionals hard at work preparing for the inevitable onslaught of Holiday Returns (yes, we’re already talking about it!). Officially, the holiday shopping season doesn’t begin until November 1, but considering all research is pointing toward a very successful shopping season—particularly for ecommerce (and that 30% of online purchases are returned- yikes), perhaps it’s never too early to start planning.

A recent article in Multichannel Merchant cited return rates for specific categories of returned holiday items; not surprisingly, apparel, shoes and consumer electronics boast the highest rates. Across our network of client marketplaces—which include sites for nine of the top 10 U.S. retailers—we see similar trends.

This season, retailers will have to contend with even more online returns than ever before; having a plan in place to offset the costs of processing, sorting, warehousing and shipping them is an essential part of preparing for the holidays. Another important aspect is what to do with the item once it comes back to the warehouse. In most cases, holiday returns don’t go back on store shelves, so having a secondary market solution in place is a must.

To get a head start on how you can leverage the secondary market to offset loss from holiday returns, check out our 2017 webinar on Tackling Holiday Returns.  

You can also check out some of our client success stories.

• • After eliminating its dependence on a single liquidator, a global ecommerce company doubled its prices on returned and overstock inventory in three months.

• • A Fortune 500 home improvement retailer was experiencing an increase in customer-returned appliances—name-brand washers, dryers, ranges and refrigerators and more. Find out how the the retailer increased recovery rates by 42% in a single quarter.

• One of the world’s largest online destinations for home furnishings and décor, was experiencing a higher volume of customer returns and other excess inventory due to explosive growth in sales. Find out how B-Stock’s customized data-driven methods have generated a 31% increase in gross merchandise value (GMV) over the retailer’s previous solution and target recovery goal.