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📰 The ecommerce news you need to know
🎧 Podcast: After 500+ episodes...
☕ Claus's Take: Returns Aren't The Problem. Your Process Is.
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📈 General Ecommerce News
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☕ CLAUS'S TAKE
Returns Aren't The Problem. Your Process Is.
$850 billion. That's how much retailers are expected to lose to returns this year.
Most brands think the only answer is reducing returns.
They're solving the wrong problem.
The real opportunity starts after the return.
Here's what surprised me:
Nearly half of returned products can still sell at full price.
Many "unsellable" returns are actually brand new.
The biggest losses often come from bad processes, not bad products.
The smartest brands don't see returns as waste. They treat them as inventory recovery.
That means:
Grade every return instead of guessing.
Catch fraud before it eats your margins.
Use return data to fix packaging, product quality, and manufacturing.
Recover value through secondary sales channels instead of liquidation.
Every return tells you something about your business. Ignore that data, and you'll keep paying for the same mistakes.
Your move: Audit your returns process this week. Don't just measure your return rate. Measure how much revenue you recover after the return. That's the KPI that actually moves profit.
Want to recover more revenue from returns? Listen to our podcast episode about "How To Recover Revenue From New Returns" here.
See you Thursday.
~ Claus
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