Many happy returns?
That mountain of online shopping represents a major change in buying habits, says Emily Cronin
Flora Joseph (not her real name) has a system. “My approach to online shopping is to order a bunch of sizes, then return what I don’t want. Or if I’m curious about the material or fit, I’ll order it just to see, even though I know I’m probably going to return it,” she says, then laughs. “My husband is horrified by the quantity of clothing that comes into the house. He doesn’t pay attention to how much goes out – really I end up keeping very little.”
Changes to shopping habits that had been making steady progress for years accelerated to warp speed in 2020. When stores closed with lockdown in March, the result was a wholesale shift to online shopping, with ecommerce sales surging 42 per cent over the past six months – and as the way people shop changed, so did the way they returned.
“The bedroom is now the fitting room,” says Al Gerrie, founder and CEO of Zigzag Global, a leading global returns platform that facilitates returns for Topshop, Boohoo and Selfridges. Just as shoppers who carried armloads of clothes into a fitting room might buy only one item, online shoppers are treating unboxing as a median stage in the shopping process, often filming this mundane unwrapping process for thousands of social media followers.
First they order, then they receive, then they try on, and then they decide what to hold on to. “Something isn’t actually sold any more until it’s kept,” says Graham Best, CEO of REBOUND Returns, a global returns network that processes 100 million transactions a year for Missguided, ASOS, Gymshark and other clients.
Early figures show that returns have surged by as much as 20 per cent year on year.
On June 29, REBOUND logged its biggest day of returns registrations ever – even bigger than the post-Christmas returns hangover in 2019.
The items people send back read like a material diary of coming to terms with life under Covid-19. In June, July and August, people sent back swimsuits and holiday-wear; after that came a shift to returns of more optimistic purchases: unworn partywear, high heels, handbags.
“It’s psychological,” one shopper says. “I’ve found myself buying things and then sending them back when I realise I’m not going to have anywhere to wear them.”
What’s not going back are the sweatpants. “We’re seeing fewer returns,” says David James, Boohoo’s director of supply chain. “Like many brands, we have extended the returns window, so there may be a delay factor here. But we think it’s because the items people are buying, such as comfy loungewear, are items where fit is less of an issue than, say, a dress, which people order in multiple sizes.”
How retailers view returns differs depending on the audience. Most will say they’re happy to offer generous return policies because they want shoppers to purchase liberally and feel comfortable taking risks on pieces that may not be in their style comfort zones.
The likelihood of goods being returned increases if the purchase is made online. While the average return rate in the UK for in-store shopping is five to 10 per cent, the average for online shopping is 50 per cent.
Best says that businesses have to reframe buy-and-returners as their most loyal shoppers.
“The myth is that a serial returner is a bad shopper. The reality is that serial returners are potentially your best customers.
“They try things on, they get to know exactly what fits, they’re much more experimental. They’re returning a lot to start off with, but if you look at the graph, over time they’re buying more and more.”
Still, there are costs to consider. “There’s no such thing as a free return, even if retailers aren’t charging for it, Gerrie says. “It’s a loss-maker.”
Along with shipping, there are charges for storage, warehousing and packaging; costs associated with sanitising and quarantining items so they’re safe to put back into the shopping ecosystem have also arisen.
If items are out for long enough – an increasing liability in these days of 100-day return windows – then chances are they’ve been marked down or become unsaleable during their time offline. You’re less likely to be able to sell July’s bikini in October.
With a fifth of British shoppers saying they don’t plan to return to physical stores at all, the shift to online seems here to stay. Which means the £8 billion returns tab British fashion businesses bear could be going up.
‘The reality is that serial returners are potentially your best customers’