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SOME
PEOPLE
THINK
WE’RE
IN THE
TRUCKING
BUSINESS.
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Online home goods and furniture retailer Overstock.
com Inc. will open a distribution center in Kansas
City, Kan. The new 517,000-square-foot operation will
allow Overstock to offer two-day ground shipping to
nearly every customer in the contiguous United States.
… Pilot Freight Services, a provider of transportation
and logistics services, has opened a 44,000-square-foot
multiclient warehouse in Salt Lake City. … Dematic, a
supplier of integrated supply chain automated technology, software, and services, has announced plans
to open a new sequencing and distribution center in
Fort Worth, Texas, to accommodate growing customer
demand for automated technology solutions.
ground breakers
Nearly two-thirds of U.S. retailers say they are considering
banning shoppers who regularly buy multiple items with
the intent to return some, according to a survey released in
October by British enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendor Brightpearl. The news comes as retailers prepare
for the holiday peak shopping season and as many report an
uptick in so-called “serial returners” over the last 12 months.
It also underscores the strain excessive returns place on the
already-expensive reverse logistics process. The situation has
caused some big-name brands to take action this year: LL
Bean announced in February that it was ending its more than
100-year-old “no questions asked” returns policy, and in
May, Amazon.com said it would begin closing the accounts
of customers who request too many returns.
Following Amazon’s lead, a quarter of retailers surveyed
by Brightpearl said that introducing lifetime bans for problem shoppers is a necessary step to protect their margins.
In addition, nearly half of U.S. retailers said they believed
curbing excessive returns would save time and administrative
resources—“an indication that chronic returns are eroding
retailers’ margins,” according to the survey report.
“In today’s consumer-led retail environment, intentional
returning could spell disaster for retail business owners if
they do not have visibility over regularly returning custom-
ers,” Derek O’Carroll, Brightpearl’s CEO, said in a statement.
“Without this, retailers will struggle with the definition and
consistent application of their returns strategies—and could
face a resulting backlash from shoppers.”
“Banned: A Returning Problem” surveyed 4,000 online
shoppers and 200 retail decision-makers to find out what
retailers are doing to combat serial returners and how con-
sumers are reacting to those decisions.
Retailers set to ban “serial
returners,” survey shows
