Retail in Reverse: Surveying the state of returns

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the November 2023 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

November 2023

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the NextGen Supply Chain Awards in Chicago. It was my first time attending the conference, which was in its fifth year, and I came away impressed with both the content and the quality of professionals I met in Chicago. This year’s conference—Strategies for a Digital Future—featured nearly 50 speakers and included CEOs and senior vice presidents, founders and innovators, leading academics and researchers, and top consultants. Over two days of the event at the Chicago Athletic Association, we learned more about artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, robotics and machine learning, fulfillment…

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The challenge of figuring out reverse logistics is much like unwinding yarn. Where do you start? And then, what does it take to avoid getting all tangled up later on?

With returns, none of this is easy. Some put extra effort into ignoring the pile in the corner. Others dedicate an area in the warehouse or even a separate facility and develop structured processes. There are those that look to other companies to handle their returns.

And while large quantities of returns make it back into the sales channel, all too often, final disposal and destruction of the return is the best option.

But that’s only the start. There’s also the matter of making returns decisions and then integrating still valuable merchandise with the order fulfillment processes in the facility. That’s not easy. But it is doable.

So, Supply Chain Management Review and Peerless Research Group wanted to hear exactly how you’re approaching reverse logistics, its value and how satisfied you are with it all today. In late summer, we contacted readers about their views. This article focuses on what they had to say about practices that work and the challenges supply chain executives face in managing returns.

If you’re looking upfront for a rough-cut assessment of how we’re doing collectively in 2023, here it is.

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