Customer Success Director, Astrid Laidet, Breaks Down Ecommerce Returns at The Industry Fashion LIVE Event

Earlier this summer, True Fit’s Customer Success Director, Astrid Laidet, delivered the opening address titled ‘Fashion Returns Unwrapped’ at The Industry Fashion’s Gain a Return on Returns in London at The Hoxton Holborn.  She shared consumer research that True Fit had commissioned earlier in the year as well as her expertise in helping retailers focus on fit strategy and producing quality garments to reduce returns and facilitate loyalty.

Astrid shared that according to True Fit’s consumer study, the average UK shopper returns 23% of the fashion items they buy online. And when we look at Gen Z, the generation shaping the future of retail, they are returning even more of the fashion they buy online (33%). This is the challenge merchants are facing as they build their digital presence and connect with customers. 

Astrid went on to share three key takeaways from her expertise partnering with brands of all sizes to help them tackle returns.

Focus on Quality and Design

Reducing returns means producing collections that the customer will want to keep. Producing quality, great-fitting garments in core categories will be important in order to win consumers over and reduce ecommerce returns. We can expect that slow fashion and the capsule wardrobe will continue to trend with consumers. Gen Z is leading the way with buying power and influence on other generations. They are doing more with less. They are being mindful about what they buy and need and it will be important to adapt to how they shop.

Audit and Optimize the PDP Experience

It is critically important to think about all traffic when building confidence about size and fit into the buying journey. There are so many different customers: new customers, loyal customers, Gen Z, millennials, customers who prefer reading reviews, customers who want to see how the clothes will look on their body shape, customers that are comfortable sharing their data to enrich their shopping experience, and customers who do not want to share personal information. 

Product descriptions, up-to-date size charts by product type, model diversity, reviews and UGC all play important roles in helping customers to evaluate size and fit. 

True Fit’s approach to fit guidance is to meet shoppers where they are most comfortable. Our platform provides a zero click fit guidance based on how customers are buying a particular product, indicating whether an item runs small, large or true to size. This allows them to get fit guidance without sharing personal information. 

True Fit also provides personalized recommendations based on a customer’s preferences and past purchases with a traveling fashion fit profile that provides automatic size recommendations across categories and brands. From this approach, we have seen on average a 5% return reduction for shoppers that follow True Fit recommendations.

Fit technologies work in concert with other PDP information to serve shoppers a great fit experience and create the most effective environment for a shopper to evaluate, convert and keep what they buy.

Collaborate Cross Functionally 

True Fit’s research revealed that 42% of shoppers who return apparel are less likely to shop again with that retailer. The stakes are so high and that means it is important to get the first visit right to lower the cost of acquisition and gain a high value shopper. There is no silver bullet for lowering returns. It is up to leaders across departments to align on goals that put customer experience first from the inception of a collection through to post-purchase.

Conclusion

It was extremely insightful to be part of TheIndustry.fashion & TheIndustry.beauty’s event, Gain a Return on Returns. We had the opportunity to collaborate and converse with companies like RIXO, Beyond Retro, Hirestreet, Harper, Happy Returns a PayPal company, NUDEA, and Bleckmann to share best practices around return reduction and customer experience.