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Returns are not a cost centre. They are the second half of the sale.

19.3%

of US online sales were returned in 2025. Apparel and footwear run well above that

~17%

the share of holiday-season sales retailers expected to be returned

NRF and Happy Returns; US, treat as directional. Returns concentrate in the weeks after peak.

19.3% of US online sales were returned in 2025. Apparel and footwear run well above that. NRF and Happy Returns; US, treat as directional. Around 17%: the share of holiday-season sales retailers expected to be returned. Returns concentrate in the weeks after peak. NRF.

Most retailers treat returns as a logistics problem to be minimised. The sharper operators treat the returns experience as a retention decision. A customer who returns an item easily, and is offered an exchange rather than only a refund, is a customer you keep. A customer who fights your returns process has just decided where not to shop next year, and tells other people.

The single most commercially significant lever here is the exchange. A refund is revenue leaving the business. An exchange keeps the customer and the margin inside the house. Making the exchange the easy, default, obvious path, rather than the refund, is one of the highest-return changes available before peak, and it costs a policy decision rather than a technology project.

The customer test. When a customer returns something bought in your golden quarter, does your process make it easy to stay a customer, or easy to leave. With a fifth of online orders coming back, that is not a service question. It is a profit question.

On the checklist

  • Exchange offered as the easy default, not buried behind refund.

Before peak arrives

This playbook is the front-end read a house can run on itself. The Barking Cat Review takes the whole house apart, shop front and back office, finds the binding constraint, and puts commercial numbers against it before peak arrives.

Back to Bulletproof for the Golden Quarter