Joe Craparotta, on January 25, 2017
It’s a tough time of year for most e-commerce businesses. Nationwide, January and February tend to be the slowest months for retailers, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Most consumers are nursing their holiday-shopping credit-card hangovers, or bracing for tax season, or perhaps spending lots of income on basic commodities like heating and electricity.
Joe Craparotta, on January 11, 2017
The new year inspires all of us to make resolutions and — here’s the hard part — actually achieve them. You know how it
goes: Fitness centers overflow with people who have resolved to lose weight in January. But how many of those people will be there in 3 or 6 months? Just a handful who have the resolve to see through their goals.
Joe Craparotta, on January 4, 2017
The holiday shopping season is over, and, if you are in the e-commerce business, you probably saw a handsome bump in sales. Nationwide, online purchases increased by about 17 percent during the 2016 holiday shopping season.
Now comes the challenge: holiday returns. Items purchased online have a shockingly high return rate — anywhere from 15 percent to 30 percent, depending on the item. (Clothes and electronics tend to have the highest returns). That rate is about three times as high as the return rate of in-store purchases.
Holiday returns create a logistical problem and inflict a very large expense on your bottom line. For businesses that operate purely online, customers are no doubt expecting that you will pay for the full cost of shipping the item back to you. They’ll also expect a full refund. And your resale value of the item is probably greatly diminished, especially if the packaging was opened. Once all the tallying is done, you’ll no doubt lose money on that item.
As e-commerce continues to be the fastest growing segment of the retail market, you can be sure that the amount of returns — and their drag on your bottom line — will grow just as fast. It’s little wonder why CNBC recently called gift returns a “ticking time bomb” that cost retailers $260 billion last year.
