We send back half the clothes we buy online
HALF of the clothes and shoes bought online are returned – most often because they don’t fit – at a huge cost to retailers.
The rise of online shopping, particularly the retail goliath Amazon, is leading to the closure of hundreds of bricks and mortar stores and turning high streets into ghost towns.
However, the web stores fuelling this switch have problems of their own as a result of the massive bills generated from the cost of delivery, returns and handling items that have been sent back.
Often, returned fashion items are no longer in season or have been handled or damaged in such a way they cannot be sold as new, reducing their resale value.
Some retailers have put up headline prices to cover the costs of returns, while others have reduced the period customers can send items back to get a refund.
A new study from Barclaycard suggests that Britons are serial returners and send back items worth some £7billion every year.
Clothes are the items most likely to be returned, according to researchers who found average annual online spending on fashions of £313 per order with items worth some £146 – 47 per cent – sent back. Returns and refunds have risen at four in ten online stores selling fashion, footwear and accessories since 2016. And one in three shoppers buy items online fully expecting the item will be unsuitable.
The research suggest retailers are their own worst enemies because they fail to offer consistent sizes across their own ranges, while shapes and sizes vary enormously between retailers.
The result is online shoppers routinely buy the same dress or top in different sizes and return those that do not fit, adding to retailers’ costs. Swedish fashion group H&M recently said it would make its UK sizes bigger to match those of other British brands, after years of complaints from customers who struggled to squeeze into its jeans, dresses and tops.
Barclaycard said: ‘The number one reason given by shoppers for returning clothes is the variation in measurement which determines sizing in the UK – a current hot topic in the fashion retail industry.
‘Two in five consumers say they return clothing bought online because items don’t fit as they expect them to.’
Stylist and TV presenter Naomi Isted said: ‘We’ve become accustomed to over-ordering and subsequently returning en masse clothes bought online.’
Barclaycard’s Konrad Kelling said: ‘Virtual fitting rooms, which allow shoppers to visualise how products will look when worn... is one way retailers could reduce the number of returns and refunds they contend with, and in turn, the size of the “phantom economy”.’