Undoing Retail’s Bad Habit: A Framework for Reducing Returns

Retailers could save up to 3% of annual revenue by focusing on reducing returns. That’s $125 billion across the retail industry per year. So, why isn’t it near the top of every CEO and CFO’s priority list?

For one, returns are a big blind spot for most retailers. 4 in 5 retailers factor returns into the cost of doing business. 97% do not have an identified executive owner responsible for reducing returns. Further, most retailers do not realize that 73% of returns occur due to a retailer controlled reason (such as issues with product fit, product quality or fulfillment errors).

Retail leaders across strategy, operations and supply chain should join this Immersion Workshop to learn about why returns reduction must be amongst their topmost priorities in 2021. In this roundtable we will discuss:

The major “controllables” retailers must focus on to reduce the incidence of returns, e.g. product quality, marketing content, fulfillment accuracy etc.
Organizational factors that prevent retailers from optimizing their return rates, and pragmatic, easy to implement interventions that can help.
How retail leaders can develop a stronger business case for returns reduction by considering the impact of a return across financial, brand, customer and environmental metrics.