Henry Hazlitt’s book “Economics in One Lesson” holds the key to any designer lifestyle brands survival and success.

Applied reveals the paradox of retail success. One brand beat a policy to double it's operating (production/transportation) efficiency metric (+10%). Tracing the unintended consequence showed a €874 million loss in group retail sales (-3% YoY). From a successful policy.

New research from Barclaycard reveals that consumer demand for free and easy returns when shopping online is placing increased pressure on retailers and impacting their bottom line.

“Today’s time-pressed shopper expects to the process to be fast, easy and free – and that applies to both buying goods as well as returning them,” said Sharon Manikon, Director of Customer Solutions at Barclaycard Global Payment Acceptance.

The $1.75 Trillion Retail Ghost Economy - The lost retail revenue from sales returns, overstocks and out-of-stocks.

For a typical retailer, the losses are the equivalent of increasing revenue by 11.7 percent. Another way, retailers currently lose 11.7 percent of revenue due to the combined impact of overstocks, out-of-stocks and needless returns (preventable returns). Imagine adding $117 million for every $1B in retail sales.

At New York’s Fashion World it was discussed “Returned items is one of the biggest costs for online retailers, with return rates of 15-50% depending on the type of item, and 60% of the time that goods are returned, poor fit is cited as the reason.” 

Working with a globally recognised American fashion, apparel, design, fragrance retail company, offering consumers high end products including men’s, women’s and children’s apparel, sportswear, denim, and a range of licensed products such as accessories, jewellery, watches, fragrances and home furnishings, we worked with one full season (12 months) of their online eCommerce shopping data in its raw, uncleaned data format and solved this enigma. Read further to learn more...