With a boom in online shopping during the pandemic and the holiday season comes a boom in online returns.
Optoro, which manages returns for companies like Target, Ikea and American Eagle, says consumers will return $120 billion worth of goods between Thanksgiving and the end of January. It’s an expensive process for retailers that’s become an even bigger problem with rising shipping costs and fewer workers to process returns.
Maybe your grandparents or in-laws gave you an ugly sweater this month. Lucky you. If you bring it back to the store, it’s easy for the retailer. You do the legwork and they put it on the shelf.
“Now if it’s an item that you buy online, the vast majority of them actually don’t go back to shelf,” said Tobin Moore, CEO of Optoro.
Online returns take up to two months to go back into inventory, Moore said. By then, that ugly sweater is out of season. So it’s put on clearance, sold to a reseller or “they’ll just toss it because that’s the most economical solution for them,” he said.
There’s no perfect fix, said Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at Forrester.
“It’s just sort of one of the things you have to do to be competitive in the retail world,” she said.
Though the cost of online returns to the retailer is high, Kodali said, the value of that service to the customer is even greater.