How Icewear automate the eCommerce returns process

Overview

Managing a booming apparel retail operation isn’t easy at the best of times. When you’re based in Iceland and shipping to customers all over the globe, things can get even trickier without the right support.

Using shipping automation with Starshipit, Icewear managed to simplify the process of fulfilling orders, no matter the destination. Now, the retailer easily manages thousands of orders per month, sending to eager buyers in different countries.

But it’s not just getting orders out – retailers also need to deal with the process of customers returning orders. This is where Icewear utilised Starshipit’s Branded Returns to eliminate hours of admin every week.

The challenge

Icewear is a leading provider of high-quality wool clothing. With a rich history dating back to the 1970s, when the company operated out of a small wool knitting shed, they’ve since grown from strength to strength, opening stores throughout their native Iceland and eventually opening an eCommerce operation.

Now, the company ships high-quality Icelandic wool products to customers needing to keep warm all over the globe.

But as every retailer knows, growth means growing pains. As the order volumes continued to grow, the company decided to get smarter about how they managed orders – and returns, which were starting to eat up time every week.

Icewear decided to invest in shipping automation.

Built-in shipping logic allows the team to create custom rules to assign orders to specific couriers, and add custom declaration text to invoices going to certain countries.

Analytics views also give the team a birds-eye view of their shipping performance. For example, using the Shipping summary dashboard, they can see the volume of orders by platform and carrier, and break their data down by different date ranges.

Automating the process of eCommerce returns and generating return shipping labels

As a business grows, so does the volume of returns. In fact, one study found that returns have now risen to nearly 17% of all orders.

With a business growing in global popularity, Icewear started to see international order volumes climb, reaching 90% of their total orders. This started to become an admin headache for staff, who managed every return manually over email, meaning they’d need to jump between different systems to organise each return.

Using different systems for returns also meant the team would lose visibility. Had a return label been created? Which returns had been processed? Were they exchanges or refunds? Even for the most competent warehouse and operations teams, returns are a pain without the right technology. Enter Starshipit.

The result

As a brand known for innovation, it was inevitable that Icewear would turn to a shipping automation solution like Starshipit. The team now saves hours every week on shipping and manages to get orders out to customers all over the world in a streamlined, stress-free way.

But it’s returns where Starshipit has had the biggest impact. After implementing Starshipit’s branded returns, Icewear could embed a self-service branded returns portal directly on their website, allowing customers to process their own returns. Best of all, this works seamlessly for international customers – and works out of the box with their courier DHL.

Instead of sending emails back and forth and printing and sending return shipping labels, Icewear now gets up to 70% of their time back per return. That's time the team can spend helping other customers and getting more high-quality Icelandic wool products out to chilly customers all over the world.