Post-COVID, more and more people are finding a way towards online shopping for clothes. Efficiency & comfort are one of the most mentioned reasons to buy their clothing online. But considering the vast number of clothing options available online without curation, it can be overwhelming for customers to find items that fit their body type and preferences.
Consequence: 56% of clothing orders are being returned, of which 70% is due to a bad fit or style. Wrong size or fit are some of the top reasons buyers return clothing items.
Consumers have been taught to shop by trend and by size. But these habits show us 1 important flaw: the shape of the body is not being taken into account. The body shape is an important factor though in how a garment looks on a person. Not every trend looks good on every body shape and even the right size might look awful. In addition, the clothing industry does not follow a single measurement system resulting in size inconsistencies between brands. These factors confuse the buyer causing them to return products that do not meet their expectations. This results in many post-purchase disappointments in the mirror.
When consumers are buying cosmetic or skincare products, they usually always start with their skin tone or type, before purchasing the right product. So why are we not shopping for clothing that way? We should start from our own self & features, add our preferences and make more conscious shopping choices. It will have a good effect on our body positivity and it will release us from the return hassles. Because next to being very in-efficient, returns have a huge polluting impact on this planet, and becoming a bigger threat every day.
From the retailer’s point of view, there seems to be a lack of understanding of the returns issues and how it negatively impacts the business and the environment. They often see returns as something necessary for the business and that its main impacts are on the logistics chain. They also do not always understand the full unit economics of returns, including how return rates and causes vary, and what an expected level of returns may be. Without this knowledge, decisions are being made on an ad hoc basis, and the root causes are not addressed. Apparently, what they do not realize is how unsustainable returns are: both in a business- and environmental-context. In fact, retailers lose a third of their revenue to returns.
Returns are turning into an e-commerce weakness. The impacts on the environment are huge. Returns multiply the greenhouse effect gases and a significant share of these items are destroyed or go to landfills- even items that are in perfect conditions to be resold, reused, or even donated. The inflow of returned goods is so massive that companies are losing their capacity to deal with it. Issues related to the sustainability of the fashion industry are usually related to the impact of textile production and waste. But it’s the impact, caused by the transport of goods, that are being overlooked. E-commerce logistics chains are a major source of damage to the environment, producing massive amounts of CO2. Returns cause an immense carbon footprint, it is estimated that they generate 2.3 billion kg of waste each year in the US alone, whilst dumping 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the equivalent of 3 million cars driving for one year. Up to 10% of what is purchased in physical stores is returned; in online stores that number is as high as 56%, and over 25% end up in landfills accounting for about €5.5 billion annually.
With these devastating numbers, we can only do 1 thing: convince retailers & end-consumers to change their behaviour and approach to returns.
We have the tool to help them do it..
“Too Many Choices? Consumer Behavior in Fast Fashion Stores” by Hira Cho, Joohye Hwang, Tracie Tung (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348784604_Too_Many_Choices_Consumer_Behavior_in_Fast_Fashion_Stores)
“Fashion E-Tail and the Impact of Returns: Mapping Processes and the Consumer Journey towards More Sustainable Practices”, by Carolina Bozzi, Marco Neves and Claudia Mont’Alvão, 2022, 14, 5328. (https:// doi.org/10.3390/su14095328)
“SizeFlags: Reducing Size and Fit Related Returns in Fashion E-Commerce”, by Andrea Nestler, Nour Karessli, Karl Hajjar, Rodrigo Weffer, and Reza Shirvany. 2021. In Proceedings of the 27th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD ’21), August 14–18, 2021, Virtual Event, Singapore. ACM, Singapore, 9 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3447548.3467160
