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Henri Lloyd slashes garment returns rates
By Retail Technology | Monday October 28 2013
Virtual fitting room technology reduces overall returns by 70% compared to shoppers who buy without trying from British sailing clothing and apparel manufacturer
Henri Lloyd, the British sailing clothing and apparel manufacturer, last week revealed how it has slashed garment returns rates with Fits.me virtual fitting room technology.
Customers using Henri Lloyd’s virtual fitting room to check the fit of garments before they complete checkout have a garment returns rate – for any reason – of just 4.5%, compared to a returns rate of 15.3% for shoppers that choose not to use the virtual fitting room before buying.
Integrated multichannel sales view
Henri Lloyd has been able to quantify the benefit of its virtual fitting room because it systems can cross-reference a returned item with its original point of sale.
Graham Allen, Henri Lloyd commercial director, said customers generally know the design and manufacturing quality they are buying, so Henri Lloyd does not get many returns for those reasons.
But he added: “The stats we’re getting are overwhelming evidence that our virtual fitting room almost entirely removes the last remaining genuine reason – ‘fit’ – for why our shoppers might choose to return clothes, and as a result it has smashed the overall returns rate.
Generating bottom line impact
“Using the Fits.me Virtual Fitting Room is still an optional part of the purchase journey, so now we will look at raising the proportion of shoppers that visit the virtual fitting room. We’re going to look at putting the virtual fitting room button in more places, and at how to make it more prominent too.”
Allen concluded: “There is some analysis to do on whether we make passing through the virtual fitting room the standard customer journey, and make skipping it – rather than using it – optional. For that extra click we could almost certainly slash our returns rates for a much larger proportion of our customers, and therefore generate a much bigger impact on our bottom line.”
