Women's clothing e-commerce return rate of 80%, who is driving crazy?

Source | Tech Planet

Text | Lin Jing

"Sell 1 million and return 700,000 ~ 800,000, this year is non-stop delivery, keep receiving returns, and then re-iron clothes for delivery, Looking back, there is still a bunch of inventory left in the end", a women's clothing e-commerce merchant told Tech Planet that the overall return rate of women's clothing has increased by about 20% this year.

This is not an isolated case, since the 618 Mid-Year Shopping Festival, there has been a lot of talk about the high return rate of women's clothing e-commerce. In particular, Taobao women's clothing store "Girl Kayla" owes more than 300 suppliers money suspected of running away, and Douyin women's clothing store "Lola Code" announced the closure of the store, and their store fans have reached the million level, the former has an annual sales volume of more than one billion, and has also won awards at Milan International Fashion Week.

With the thunderstorm of the head brands on these platforms, more and more women's clothing merchants find that they can't calculate their accounts, and they have posted background data on social platforms, and the more they sell, the more they lose.

On the other hand, consumers also feel helpless, they complain that the clothes they receive are "not the right version", and the merchants set up a variety of pre-sales, and the price of clothes is increasing, but the quality is getting worse and worse.

Behind the soaring return rate, what is happening to women's clothing e-commerce?

Soaring women's clothing return rates, collapsing merchants

"This year, I can't stand the blood loss of the unit price of medium and low customers", Zhang Yuan, who has been doing women's clothing e-commerce for 5 years, said to Tech Planet that the biggest challenge is the sharp rise in operating costs.

Taking freight insurance as an example, Zhang Yuan introduced that in the past, a single freight insurance merchant paid 0.7 yuan ~ 1.5 yuan, and the cost of sending 1000 orders was up to 1500 yuan, but this year it is doubling growth, and 1000 orders are generally 4500 ~ 5000 yuan. The cost of investment is also increasing, and now the promotion cost behind each sale is about dozens of yuan, and the promotion fee for selling 1,000 orders is also tens of thousands of yuan.

In the past two years, major e-commerce platforms have paid more attention to user experience and competed for existing user traffic. For example, Taobao, Douyin and other platforms have successively launched price comparison systems, from the platform to the whole network, the lower the merchant price, the more opportunities to get more traffic and exposure. Reflected on the consumer side, when they buy a product, the platform will push a similar product at a lower price to them.

Among them, some merchants choose worse fabrics to make clothes in order to roll low prices, saving costs, resulting in a significant increase in product return rates.

On the other hand, e-commerce platforms are also providing services and establishing a more complete after-sales mechanism. Whether it is for membership on the e-commerce platform or through the freight insurance provided by the merchant, the threshold for user returns has been greatly reduced.

There is also the introduction of the "refund only" mechanism, which was originally intended to reduce disputes and contradictions between merchants and users on issues related to quality and returns, but now it is a headache for some merchants, such as some "wool parties" who use this loophole to make malicious refunds to make profits, and even special training courses have been charged to teach the skills of refunds and wool.

Zhang Yuan described only the refund as "relying on fate", in his opinion, it depends on the degree of responsibility of the little two who audited the store, and some of the little two are employees outsourced by the platform. For example, in Zhang Yuan's store, some users wrote a quality problem on the reason for refund, and they were approved in seconds without providing any pictures or video evidence.

In addition, the live broadcast room has also further amplified the return rate of women's clothing. Women's clothing anchor Miao Miao told Tech Planet that unlike many e-commerce promotion activities, merchants are eligible to participate only if they provide freight insurance, in the live broadcast room, freight insurance is a "bargaining chip" for many anchors to guide users to place orders and increase sales. Usually, the anchor will remind users in the live broadcast room, "It doesn't matter if it's suitable or not, buy it home first, try it on first, shoot boldly, and you can get a refund with freight insurance." ”

Miao Miao said that in her live broadcast room, a consumer usually buys multiple colors and sizes of clothes at one time, and finally returns them all, or leaves the most suitable set, the live broadcast room itself is impulse consumption, and the return rate is higher than other channels, and the return rate of 80% is very common.

"For anchors, live broadcast data is the first place, even if the cost of freight insurance and other costs has increased, but only with good data in the live broadcast room can we get traffic, and then we can sell more. It is better for users to buy and return than not to place an order. Miao Miao added.

Long pre-sale period, more routines

In order to cope with the high return rate, many merchants have begun to set up pre-sale periods, and the maximum period allowed by the platform is generally 15 days. In the past, merchants were able to manage warehouse inventory more flexibly through the pre-sale period, and had enough reaction time to determine exactly how many clothes should be produced, so as to reduce the overstock of inventory and reduce costs.

Now, with the soaring return rate of women's clothing, the pre-sale period has become an important way for merchants to reduce the cost of returns. Women's clothing e-commerce merchant Nuomi told Tech Planet that the inventory spot seen by consumers is the number of false labels of merchants, such as a live broadcast of a single product sold 1000 pieces, the merchant will only stock 500 pieces according to the 50% return rate, according to the 48-hour delivery speed, generally a batch of orders will be returned by users overnight.

This is almost an open secret in the industry, glutinous rice said, through the pre-sale period, the merchant adopts the form of batch delivery, the first batch of returned clothing, as long as it is not dirty or broken, re-ironing the packaging, and then sent to the second batch of users. Moreover, if the consumer receives the goods earlier than the pre-sale period, the merchant will also say "we will make it for you as soon as possible".

However, during the two-year promotion festival, the process has been continuously simplified to give users a better experience, which has become the unanimous choice of e-commerce platforms. In particular, during the 618 period this year, Taobao, Jingdong, Kuaishou and other platforms officially announced the cancellation of the "pre-sale model" that had lasted for 10 years, with "simple and direct" as the selling point to compete for more sales and traffic. Merchants who want to rely on the pre-sale model to reduce the risk of returns were caught off guard.

In addition, behind the high return rate, some merchants want to maintain profits, and begin to cut corners in production details such as materials and tailoring, or increase product prices, and indirectly transfer the cost of return and exchange to consumers.

Women's clothing anchor Miao Miao revealed to Tech Planet that the clothes worn by the anchors in the live broadcast rooms of some businesses are made of high-end fabrics, but the actual mass production of goods to users is made of relatively inferior fabrics, and the clothes on the anchor's body are usually clamped with some clips to better modify the version, and there are beautification and filters in the live broadcast room to achieve a better display effect, which will cause users to buy it back and wear it, and return it if it does not meet the ideal requirements. Miao Miao said that among the reasons for refunds in the merchant background, the wrong version of the goods is the main reason.

There are also some merchants who will use worse fabrics in order to increase profits, which will eventually cause bad money to drive out good money. After a dress in Zhang Yuan's store was sold out, it was quickly copied and copied by other merchants, and sold at a lower price, and at the same time accurately cast to target users. Zhang Yuan said that now in a week at most, these plagiarized merchants can quickly produce the same product on the shelves, and the life cycle of popular clothing has also been greatly shortened, which can only last for about a month.

If the plagiarized business has a supply chain advantage, can get the lowest purchase price, and the price of the roll is good, then everyone is competing for the supply chain capacity, but more merchants are using inferior fabrics to shoddy, the same style is lower price, user complaints are aggravated, and the product reputation collapses. Zhang Yuan said that as a result, the popular products in his store were not only intercepted, but also more difficult to sell in the future.

Behind a series of operations, merchants have saved costs, but sacrificed product quality, consumers have received more and more dissatisfied clothes, they complain, return many times, can not buy the model in the store that one product, the size is wrong, the workmanship is rough, the version is wrong, a lose-lose situation has entered a vicious circle.

Under the involution, who will be the first to be shuffled

In the view of Wang Lu, a women's clothing e-commerce merchant, with the involution of the women's clothing e-commerce market, small and medium-sized businesses and large sellers with low and medium customer unit prices are more affected. The former mainly refers to the new merchants who rely on the development of stalls or factories, while the latter refers to the stores with relatively high store levels and a large number of daily orders.

Wang Lu calculated an account of his store to Tech Planet, 100 pieces of freight insurance plus freight cost is 100 * 3.5 + 100 * 4 = 750, plus packaging labor cost 100 * 2 = 200, the postage cost of selling 100 pieces is 950 yuan, but selling 100 pieces to return 70 pieces, which is equivalent to selling 30 pieces, which means that the real cost of sending an order is more than 30 yuan.

Moreover, clothing merchants usually first produce design drafts, then make patterns to make samples, and finally take photos and videos, but now small and medium-sized clothing businesses in order to save costs, will directly hang factory pictures on the store, they have not seen the real version, and finally the goods sent from the factory to the hands of users, color difference, style and picture are far away.

Wang Lu said that if it is not the manufacturer to give the picture, but to go to the manufacturer to get the sample clothes and ask someone to take the picture or take it yourself, the usual process shooting includes a separate main picture, SKU picture, detail map, function and selling point, these are combined to design a layout is the detail page, and finally carry out some style design collocation, a style shooting cost is about 400 ~ 600 yuan, many low customer unit price merchants can not bear this part of the cost.

This is also one of the reasons why the consumer experience of women's clothing is worse now, many users will complain, and now the women's clothing store from the first picture to the details, there is only one model picture, and even the basic parameters of the clothing are not provided, the purchase experience has dropped significantly, and the probability of the wrong version of the goods has naturally increased significantly.

In addition, Wang Lu also said that after the e-commerce platform launched the price comparison system in the first half of the year, merchants who directly took pictures from manufacturers will also be more affected.

This is because, a picture, the factory may give thousands of merchants at the same time, want to break through the competition, on the one hand, test the supply chain resources of merchants, if you can get the goods at a lower price, have the ability to roll lower prices, get more traffic and exposure, you can break through.

On the other hand, the test of the stability of the merchant's pallet, when this style becomes a popular product, sales skyrocket, are to find manufacturers to supply goods, there is also a priority, manufacturers first to higher sales of large customers, followed by small customers. If the delivery is delayed or the user clicks to urge the delivery, the e-commerce platform will also have corresponding penalties for the merchant.

Compared with white-label products, the marketing leader of a leading clothing brand told Tech Planet that the advantage of the brand is that it has built a certain amount of private domain traffic, and there are customers with a strong repurchase rate. Usually the time when the return rate is relatively high is during the discount season of the brand. Brands will focus on setting different echelons of discounts for a period of time, but now many users want to pick up the lowest price, they will buy multiple times during this time, and finally leave the cheapest price, so they can often receive returns from users box by box.

On the whole, with the intensification of the involution of e-commerce, the continuous game between platforms, merchants and users has amplified the return rate of women's clothing e-commerce. But at the same time, after the goods are in hand, why consumers are reluctant to stay, solving these problems is the key to the long-term development of women's clothing online stores.

(Note: All names have been changed.) ）