NEW YORK: As shoppers pick up their last Christmas presents under the tree, U.S. retailers are pushing for a flood of online gift sets purchased at the time of the deadly rise in issues coronavirus. To make the process more efficient, retailers including Walmart Inc and Target Corp allowed customers to donate unwanted gifts at FedEx or United Parcel Service drop-off sites.
Others, including Best Buy, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Nordstrom, are offering pavement products for the first time as efforts to halt the spread of COVID-19 have closed stores or has reduced the number of customers allowed in.
Results are expected to return this year. Customers trying to avoid contagion moved from stores to online – where return rates are historically higher. Vendors are also under pressure to make the process as quick as possible for the buyers they want to keep as longtime buyers as well as for UPS and FedEx, which are full of packages.
Even some shopping stores are moving to make returns easier for their tenants. Mall of America and Simon Property Group have both partnered with Narvar, a return management provider, to eliminate the need for customers to print return vouchers for packages they release.
The National Retail Alliance expects 2020 holiday sales to jump as much as 5.2 percent from last year to US $ 766.7 billion. About 13 percent of goods, or about US $ 101 billion worth, sold during the 2020 holiday season will be returned, the trade body said.
Optoro, which helps retailers sort out, resell and dispose of returned goods, adds an even higher number. It predicts that the 2020 U.S. holiday results will hit US $ 115 billion between Thanksgiving Day and the end of January. That’s up 15 percent from the 2019 forecast released by the company, which counts UPS and home furniture retailer IKEA among investors.
The indoor clothing return rate is 5 to 8 percent, while online runs around 30 percent, said Rob Zomok, president of global operations at Inmar Intelligence, which processes approximately 600 million sales and e-commerce products annually.
“That math has dramatically increased productivity,” said Zomok, who said the clothes are the highest ever.
“When your shopping is 100 percent online, it’s very likely that you are ordering an additional pair (items) with the intention of returning,” said Sriram Sridhar, chief executive of LateShipment.com, which helps viewers look forward to keep on folders.
“We expect each vendor to have about 50 per cent more output than in previous years during the holiday season,” said Sridhar.
In addition, vendors also quarantine or clean products after they are returned to ensure they are virus-free.
“This is not the usual way products are processed,” said Paula Rosenblum, managing manager at sales research firm RSR Research. Kohl’s, which collects Amazon.com returns and sends them back to e-tailer, has extended its own date for major electronics.
He engages with a number of retailers, including Walmart, Macy’s and Amazon, which give customers more time to return purchases – a move that could make it more difficult to resell seasonal products . Getting these products for resale is crucial – especially for fast fashion retailers that sell fashionable clothing, said Inmar’s Zomok.
“The window is going to be short,” Zomok said.