Happy Returns wants to make the reverse logistics process more flexible for large retailers by allowing them to accept returns from multiple brands in their network across online and in stores—and is tagging Shein as one of the first beneficiaries of its newest feature.
The UPS-owned company known for its 9,000 Return Bars is enabling shoppers to return Shein products to 373 Forever 21 stores in the U.S. via its box-free, label-free buy online, return in store (BORIS) capabilities.
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“We are always looking for new ways to optimize the shopping experience for Shein customers—from speedier delivery to easy returns,” said George Chiao, president of Shein U.S. in a statement.
According to Mark Geller, co-founder and chief product officer of Happy Returns, Shein is the largest merchant the returns technology provider has partnered with to date. It also marks a first for Happy Returns, in that it now works with a third-party retailer outside of its current network in Forever 21.
Geller said the new capabilities aim to solve problems that enterprise retailers often encounter with online returns. He said returns acceptance and software integration are still pain points, in that they can slow down a shopper getting their refund or prevent them from updating their inventory systems appropriately.
The co-founder also noted that retailers often have difficulties in physically handling returned products.
“Receiving large numbers of online returns in the physical stores is a major challenge for the stores to manage for a variety of reasons,” Geller said. “The first is often they will sell online SKUs that aren’t even in the inventory system of the stores, and/or you have all these onesie-twosie returns coming back that you know are unpredictable and unbalanced. It’s a challenge to deal with that inventory just coming into their stores. And wanting to have ways for that inventory to go to the right place, so that they know what they have and where they have it. And they’re able to sell it for their maximum margin.”
Happy Returns says the cross-brand solution is return portal agnostic, meaning retailers can use their own portal or Happy Returns’ proprietary software to generate QR codes for box-free drop off and direct shoppers to any store designated in the merchant’s network.
“Before we accept the items, our software also enables Forever 21 to do what we call ‘item scanning,’ so they’re able to scan the items for barcodes to validate that the item is present and then it’s the correct item,” Geller said. “The rest is facilitating that process with the customer to not only accept their item, but then automatically provide those customers with coupons for Forever 21. That’s obviously a big part of what Forever 21 is getting—the foot traffic.”