Holiday return season lasting longer
Christmas presents without a gift receipt are perfectly fine for Las Vegas resident Nikci Kephart, who was shopping at the Fashion Show mall last week with her family.
She doesn’t do lines, she said.
And the first few days after Christmas are known for long, long lines at the return counter.
“If it really doesn’t work out, (we’ll) donate it,” Kephart said, rather than return something in a store.
This holiday season 77 percent of consumers said they plan to return a portion of their gifts while nearly 20 percent expect to return more than half of their presents, according to a survey of 15,800 global consumers by computer technology company Oracle.
As online shopping grows, analysts and retailers say people are foregoing the traditional day-after-Christmas return trip. They now see the surge of returns continuing throughout next month.
“There would be this huge spike the first week of January where everyone would go and return items,” Optoro Vice President of Marketing Carly Llewellyn said. “Now what we’re seeing is that there’s actually just a steady amount of returns. So, it’s just sort of a consistent wave.”
Happy Returns Vice President of Marketing Caitlin Roberson said she has seen retailers like footwear company Rothy’s stretch their return policy for the holiday season.
“We’ve seen brands expand their return policy all the way back to Jan. 31,” Roberson said.
The company partners with online brands like Everlane and Rothy’s to allow their customers to return online purchases at a partner brick-and-mortar store. In Las Vegas, Happy Returns operates five return bar locations including Paper Source at Town Square and Tivoli Village, Cost Plus World Market locations on Blue Diamond Road and North Rainbow Boulevard, and Las Vegas Premium Outlets South.
“Rothy’s doubled the return window that they allow. Retail businesses are understanding that a return and exchange policy is a key priority for consumers when they’re picking where to make their purchases,” she said.
Sally Jo McNamara, who was shopping at Fashion Show last week, said it’s simply not a high priority to return holiday gifts quickly.
“I work in retail, so the last thing I want to do is go back to more stores,” she said.
Roberson credits the growing rate of returns to the growth of e-commerce sales and retailers’ generous return policies such as buy online, return in-store and an extended return window.
Special delivery
Oracle’s survey found that while 65 percent would make their return in-store, 32 percent of those polled would return their gifts by mail.
UPS dubbed Jan. 2 as National Returns Day, when it expects 1.9 million packages to be shipped back to retailers, a 26 percent increase from last year.
Rod Spurgeon with USPS corporate communications said the holiday return season is big for the Post Office but smaller compared with the estimated 800 million packages it processed the week of Dec. 16.
“We’re probably going to see maybe 30 percent or so of that come back in returns, so it’s not nearly as much as we’d see in the holiday shipping volume,” Spurgeon said.
Contact Subrina Hudson at shudson@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0340. Follow @SubrinaH on Twitter.
Optoro, a tech firm helping clients like Target, Best Buy and Ikea optimize their return process, estimates $100 billion in holiday returns this year, up from $90 billion last year. It considers the holiday return season from Cyber Monday, or Dec. 2, to Jan. 31.
