Steve Rop says it’s time for a revolution in returns. As retailers pull out of a relatively disappointing peak holiday shopping season, the cost of returned goods is going to sting all the more. In fact, customer relationship management giant Salesforce reported a 63% spike in returns during November and December, year over year. So a revolution sounds good, but there’s a hard edge here: E-commerce is growing in terms of proportion of overall retail sales, and e-commerce attracts a much higher rate of returns.
One way retailers can ease the financial burden of returns is to use them as an incentive to get shoppers back into brick-and-mortar stores, says Rop, who is chief operating officer at goTRG, a company that works with companies such as Walmart, Sam’s Club and Lowe’s to process returned items.
