Business Insider Interviews Newmine’s Returns Reduction Experts
Business Insider’s recent article, “Shoppers are abandoning store dressing rooms for their own homes, and it’s sparked a wave of returns,” by Áine Cain, features interviews with returns reduction experts at Newmine.
This article covers:
- The rise of the eCommerce Returns Tsunami
- Why Customers are Turning their Bedrooms Into Their Dressing Rooms
- How Returns Reduction offers a Sustainable Solution
At Newmine, a returns reduction technology startup, they have a saying: “The best return is the one that never has to happen.”
Returns proved to be a $309 billion headache for the retail business in 2019, according to a report from Appriss Retail, a service that tracks and bars customers from making purchases after they have made too many returns. Of those returns, online sales accounted for $41 billion. And an entire cottage industry — including Newmine — has sprung up to cater to retailers struggling to stem the tide of returns.
Business Insider spoke to Newmine CEO and founder Navjit Bhasin and partner Mark Lightbody about the current state of returns and how they’re altering the face of e-commerce.
Bhasin says that the problem of returns dates back to the 1980s and 1990s, when catalogue businesses were still booming. The issue of returns was far more “contained” in those days, he said.
Then, e-commerce exploded.
“The typical retailer did not anticipate how deep a negative impact returns were going to have on the business going forward,” Bhasin said. “Everyone thought of e-commerce as just another storefront.”
But, as Bhasin said, the “equation changed from 2000 to 2019.” As e-commerce started maturing and growing into a bigger percentage of the retail business, the pain set in.
“What might have been $1 million returns in a year, quickly ended up being $25 million to $30 million and up to nearly $100 million in returns a year,” Bhasin said.