Have you ever thought about how much of your annual product returns actually happen after the holidays?
You know it’s significant. And if you’re average, the number hovers around 25%, says an article at Retail Drive.
How do you deal with all those returns, logistically speaking, so you have happier customers, while at the same time not stressing your company’s time and money to the extreme?
It’s usually far too expensive to restock these items on your own shelves. So what do you do?
Here’s some possible solutions:
1. Use Online Liquidation Marketplaces
You know about Amazon, the online marketplace for consumers. Did you know online marketplaces exist for retail liquidators too?
You can use refurbishing, vendor returns, or placing items back on your shelves to deal with returns.
But online liquidation marketplaces have high scalability these other options can’t easily execute.
They’re much smaller in scale than Amazon. But you can easily find them with a Google search.
You also tend to get better prices when you go this route.
2. Secondary Market Resellers
Amazon, eBay, independently owned discount stores, exporters, and flea market sellers represent the secondary market.
Did you know that some of the top third-party Amazon resellers do several hundred million in revenue annually?
Amazon also has more than 20,000 sellers who do more than $1 million in revenue annually.
It’s just another possibility to deal with your returns at a large scale.
3. Donate to Charity, Take the Tax Deduction, and Create Positive PR
Goodwill does about $5.1 billion in revenue annually. Certainly far from the top for-profit retailers, but also nothing to dismiss.
If you have products leftover in good condition, and even at mass volume, Goodwill will certainly take them.
And to do yourself double the good, make a public PR event about it to improve your image with your customers.
Maybe Goodwill wouldn’t be the charity of your choice. But you might have local or regional charities you’d like to donate to.
Yes. You can make back some of your money for items returned to you in a way that doesn’t drive your own costs through the roof.
It’s simply up to you to figure out the best path for your business, which could be one, none, or all of the above.