How Returns Is a Tough Nut to Crack in Cross-Border eCommerce

With the rise in cross-border eCommerce, many retailers have started accepting international orders leading to increased revenue.

And, it’s not just the retailers. With increased internet penetration and access to better logistics options, customers participate in cross-border eCommerce as well.

While this leads to increased sales, it also poses many challenges. Let’s take a look at them.

Challenges in Cross-Border eCommerce

The major challenge in cross-border eCommerce is returns management of unsold inventory and high cost of reverse logistics. For example, the industry standard average profit for an online sale is 10%. In the case of a $50 pair of shoes that ends up being returned, the e-retailer earns $5 but may pay roughly $15 in return costs, resulting in a net loss of $10.

In the USA alone, Statista estimates returns will cost retailers $550 billion by 2020, up 75.2% over a four-year period. Imagine that!

As far as returns in the USA are concerned, the United States market is oversupplied with goods for sale. Often these goods do not sell through on the first try for a variety of reasons –

• Poorly written descriptions which affect discoverability and sales
• Bad feedback from a random consumer who had a one-off experience
• Overestimating consumer demand in a particular marketplace or geographic region

Other challenges that complicates the cross-border eCommerce include –

• Content localization – For brands to have a unique selling proposition, it is important to think like a local customer and what keywords they search when selling into a different country. Listing, content creation and communicating in the local language are the challenges faced by the e-retailers.
• Liquidating returns – Liquidating, reselling or getting back the items in customer’s cart is another challenge that e-retailers face. In the USA, around 20-30% of cross-border returns get thrown away in landfills leading to huge losses for the sellers.
• Selling across multiple channels – In the USA, over 50% of eCommerce sales happen outside of Amazon. E-retailers struggle to sell on multiple channels as each channel has different requirements.

In addition to those, we are also in an era of copy-cat competition either from the marketplace or from other sellers. It is easy to find what is working on a particular online marketplace, copy the product, copy the listing and make changes to race ahead of the competition using techniques that spot weakness in advertising or exploit the feedback of the competition.

With challenges like these, it gets very difficult for e-retailers to succeed in cross-border eCommerce.

But don’t worry! We have got you covered. Returns USA can help you streamline your returns management from USA.

What Is Returns USA?

Returns USA provides returns management and reverse logistics services for both domestic and cross-border eCommerce reducing return costs and increasing your profit margins.

The mission of Returns USA is to streamline eCommerce returns and increase your profitability, so you can focus your attention on more important aspects of their business.

Benefits from Returns USA in Cross-Border eCommerce

With the right approach, your returns can be both a competitive advantage as well as a healthy source of loyalty and profits. Here’s how Returns USA can help you –

Efficient Returns Management and Liquidation

Returns USA handles returns efficiently with quickfire solutions to liquidate or resell them. They are effective in receiving returns, damage check (QC), put-away, processing, repackaging, and restocking.

Every return is checked for damages, rebagged and re-tagged if needed, given a Returns USA certification and put away. The return processing for individual consumers or bulk shipments. In the case of bulk shipments they are handled by the skid or by the tractor-trailer load as well as the daily flow of individual customer returns. Each return is examined, logged into the WMS system, and given the Returns USA Trust Seal.

Returns USA can sell out your returns on its retail liquidation website, fulfill for a new sale you create, or send back to something like an Amazon FBA once a group of returns are received.

Economical Storage Space for Overstocks

In case of Amazon overstocks you are faced with the decision –

• Keep the items at Amazon warehouse and pay huge storage fees
• Dispose or throw away the items
• Return them to your warehouse overseas and pay huge shipping fees

Returns USA allows you to have safe economical storage and a chance to sell to a budget conscious customer base looking for deals. Where Amazon has billions of items, Returns USA’s marketplace focuses on smaller groups of products to our growing bargain hunting audience.

Mailbox to Store Returned Items

Drop shipping goods to the USA can be an economical way to extend your catalog and offer a wider assortment of products without the risk or expense of sending a larger amount of goods to Amazon or another marketplace.

However, returns are often a nightmare and end up either in 100% refund or a negative feedback experience for the shopper.

Returns USA offers you a mailbox on the east coast of the USA that you can give to your customers. Your returns will be processed and stored safely until further instruction.

By having this address listed from the USA, your trust immediately goes up from American consumers and will result in more overall business.

Remarketing of Returned Goods

Have you consigned goods to a distributor or a brick and mortar store and the goods have simply not sold? Is the store you do business with shutting down?

Instead of having these goods cause issues of space and money tied up with no outlet, Returns USA can take large consignment of goods and find retail customers through its marketplace or by preparing these goods for Amazon, ebay or other online sales.

Returns USA is a neutral middle ground for safe storage of your goods and finds a way to help you remarket it without the hassle of trying to re-import the goods back into your country.

Promotional Inserts for Returns

Returns USA helps you drive new business keeping your customers happy through promotional material for returns. It provides coupons and promotional flyers to your customers hence builds loyalty and profitability.

Wrapping Up

Expanding your business internationally and handling product returns is a tough nut to crack. Thankfully Returns USA is built to suit your business’s return volume and needs.

Take advantage of its low shipping rates and enterprise warehouse management system along with streamlined and automated return process.