On average, 30% of fashion retail sales return to the retailer as customer returns.
To keep up with competition in the fast fashion industry, it’s critical to make a returned product available for resale as soon as possible. Any unsold inventory might end up consuming store space and ultimately block cash flow.
To help customers accelerate sales and inventory flow, we added a configuration to the HotWax OMS that enables retailers to control if and when they would like any returned inventory to be available for sale.
Why this Change is Important
Previously, when orders were sent to the stores, retailers sometimes faced rejections from stores saying they don't have inventory available for fulfillment.
Upon further investigation, we discovered that there was not a defined SOP when processing in-store returns of online orders. Stores were receiving returned items and simply putting them aside instead of immediately making them available. Simultaneously, the return transaction was being recorded on POS, so HotWax Commerce was receiving the return transactions and adding these products back to the inventory pool, leading to rejected orders.
In many cases, stores also have a defined SOP where they prefer an inspection of returned items before making returned items available for sales.
Instead of immediately making returned items available for resale, we added a configuration for retailers to choose if they want to restock returns immediately or not. When returns are restocked, HotWax Commerce will be updated with increased inventory levels by the POS in-store or the WMS at warehouses.
