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- The fashion sector has to deal with a return rate sometimes as high as 40%.
- Last year, fashion returns created 750,000 tonnes of carbon-dioxide emissions in the UK.
- Research shows some companies value deshoppers and rely on lenient return policies to boost sales.
One shopper, who asked to be called Dani H, said she returns 95% of the clothes she buys online. She's a health and well-being journalist who's done a lot of online shopping lately, but also said it's hard for her to rely on the sizes published on the internet.
To solve this problem, Dani H said she usually orders more sizes of the same product and returns the ones she doesn't need — a shopping strategy known as "bracketing."
But overly lenient return policies — put in place for online customers — might have unintentionally created a culture of "deshopping." And while it's having a negative impact on workers and our planet, some retailers have said they don't mind.
Culture of deshopping
Deshopping, also called "wardrobing" or "fashion-borrowing," is a practice wherein customers buy new clothes for an event, a job interview, a photoshoot, or just one night out, and then return the clothes days later as unused. Unlike with bracketing, deshoppers wear the clothing before returning it.
Customers will always need to have the option to return purchases, Stuart Higgins, a partner in consumer goods and retail at the independent-consulting firm BearingPoint, said. But shoppers who buy clothes with the intent of returning them after wearing them are adding fuel to the fire.
Returns make up an infamous retailers' conundrum. The fashion sector has to deal with a return rate sometimes as high as 40% and previous research indicates that wardrobing has been a growing consumer behavior for over a decade.
Some retailers ship purchases for free if orders cost over a certain amount
This online-shopping benefit creates another opportunity for even more returns. Zeenia Naqvee, a student in her 20s from Sheffield, England, said she sometimes orders multiple sizes, not just to be sure an item fits, but also to avoid paying for shipping.
By purchasing more products and returning them later, shoppers can easily avoid paying for delivery costs. "I do that like once a month," Naqvee said.
No matter how hard clothing businesses try, online purchases always leave room for error, which is why retail fashion has the highest rate of online purchases returned.
Retailers are likely to see deshopping and bracketing as minor issues if managed well
According to a study published in the Journal of Marketing Management in 2010, companies are "deliberately blinkered" when it comes to addressing the wardrobing issue. Some even see deshoppers as more valuable customers than those who return products due to genuine reasons, such as wrong sizing or poor-quality material.
A more recent study from 2021 looked at planned versus unplanned returns and showed that lenient return policies can boost sales to the extent that it compensates for the costs associated with processing returned products.
Shoppers who plan to return the goods from the beginning are more likely to be loyal customers. Today, companies consider returns management to be more of a marketing tool, and handling returns well can help companies gain new customers and keep them coming back.
Despite retail benefits, returns are bad for workers
The wording of the once-ubiquitous phrase "free returns" may suggest that the transportation, processing, and handling of unwanted garments are so simple that there's no need for covering the costs. Nonetheless, for retailers and for the environment, the provision of such returns is anything but free.
More returned packages, regardless of whether the companies cover the costs, require more distribution centers. Big warehouses and distribution centers create lots of new job vacancies, which often leave room for staff exploitation.
In August last year, an investigation by the Observer found that Mach Recruitment, a jobs agency that supplies workers for brands including the online-fashion brands Boohoo and PrettyLittleThing repeatedly withheld wages from staff.
The environment likely suffers from fashion returns a lot more than we dare to estimate
Staff aren't the only ones that we need to consider. A big proportion of unwanted clothes that companies can't resell or recycle end up burned or in landfills.
According to a report by the Institute of Positive Fashion, 50% of returned items that can't be resold go to landfills. The disposable-packaging materials are creating yet more environmental damage and the need for extra delivery vehicles is generating unnecessary carbon emissions and polluting the air.
Last year, fashion returns were responsible for 750,000 tonnes of carbon-dioxide emissions in the UK.
Some people think wardrobing should be illegal
In November last year, Insider shared data showing that 46% of survey respondents from OnePoll thought wardrobing should be a serious legal offense. Oftentimes, deshoppers have been considered unethical villains who exploit the generous return policies of retailers, but this isn't always the case.
Fashion students often need clothing and accessories for portfolios and creative projects. "At university, they encouraged us to buy from charities and secondhand shops, which we did a few times," Chloe, a wardrobe assistant who asked that Insider not publish her last name for professional reasons, said.
Chloe promptly admitted that students were mostly ordering from retailers such as ASOS, which at that time allowed customers to return their purchases for free. "I agree that it wasn't sustainable, but at the same time, I also knew there wasn't any other way to do it," she said.
When Chloe started doing more freelance work, she discovered other ways to secure clothes for her work. "When doing a job for a magazine, you get a pull letter, which you can show the PR agencies and they will provide you with clothes for shooting, then you return it to them," she explained.
If we could properly analyze every motivation behind returns, we'd see that quite a few deshoppers find themselves forced to look for those kinds of opportunities to affordably do their jobs or to finish their studies.
But whether consumers are deshopping for an event, a school project, or for free shipping, educating the general public on the effects of this practice could be the first step toward finding a more holistic solution to the online-returns conundrum.