With more than 1,200 brands within its portfolio, and many of those on the Shopify platform, post-purchase firm Loop Returns has been turning returns into exchanges since its 2017 founding. On Wednesday, the company announced it was making the process of returns even easier, partnering with Happy Returns by PayPal to streamline the e-commerce returns process.
Loop customers can now bring their returns to any of more than 5,000 Happy Returns locations, allowing the Happy Returns team to facilitate that return.
“We are excited to work with Happy Returns and help our merchants to offer a delightful drop-off option for their customers,” said Jonathan Poma, CEO and co-founder of Loop. “Many of Shopify’s biggest brands choose Loop as their returns solution; wrapping Happy Returns’ frictionless drop-off solution in our technology provides a first-class customer experience from end to end.”
More than 20% of all online sales are returned, costing customer brands as much as $218 billion in lost sales. Loop says that making a customer’s return experience easier results in a customer more likely to return to the brand and reduces new acquisition costs.
Loop works with reverse logistics companies to make the experience as smooth as possible. Its options include home pickup, item donation and item consolidation. Now it includes access to Happy Returns’ national network.
“Making returns beautiful has always been our mission — whether that experience begins in our portal, a partner’s portal or the merchant’s own portal. Our work with Loop is a natural extension of our Return Bar offering, since we both put shoppers at the forefront of e-commerce exchanges and returns,” said David Sobie, Happy Returns co-founder and vice president. “We know the majority of shoppers prefer to return items box free and in person, because their returns are instantly approved and they get their money back faster. We’re thrilled to empower more of Shopify’s best merchants to offer this option through Loop.”
It launched its Return Bar in 2019. To increase efficiency in the returns’ logistics operations, Happy Returns aggregates individual returns into one large palletized shipment.
“In a Return Bar, we may accept around 40 items a day, which can come from 20 different retailers. But all those items are going together in a single box to one of our processing hubs, where we aggregate across all the Return Bars, and send one large aggregated shipment back to the retailer or the next best place,” Sobie said at the time.
PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) acquired Happy Returns early in 2021. In September 2021, Happy Returns announced it would open Return Bar locations within Staples stores. The company’s nationwide service allows consumers to bring items for return to a Return Bar location without the need to include packaging or labels.
Shoppers begin the return process on the merchants’ websites or at HappyReturns.com to receive a QR code. They then bring the items only plus the QR code to a Staples retail store to complete the return. A typical return takes less than a minute, the company noted, and returns are approved in real time. Happy Returns initiates refunds and exchanges immediately in most cases.
Now Shopify brands that use Loop will be able to leverage this Happy Returns network as well as its existing Loop network to offer a new level of returns service to customers.
Click for more articles by Brian Straight.
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