With the gift-buying season just around the corner, retailers must brace for more returns. Last year, customers in the U.S. returned about $351 billion worth of items that they had purchased from brick-and-mortar retailers and online stores, according to estimates by National Retail Federation.

Headquartered in Washington D.C., Optoro is another firm that offers a range of services to retailers to help them recoup the losses on returns. “Our technology uses machine learning and data algorithms to determine the highest value channel for each returned item, including return to stock, return to vendor, list on a secondary marketplace, refurbish, or donate,” Carly Llewellyn, senior director of marketing at Optoro, told CNBC.