Scaling with Shopify: Why high-volume returns management needs more than just an app

For high-volume brands scaling their Shopify store, manual returns management creates an impossible strain on their teams.

A Shopify returns app can help to automate those processes. But not all returns apps are made equal:

If you’re looking to scale and manage returns successfully, you need more than just software that handles your data. You need a returns app that’s backed by real-world logistics – a global network of carriers, warehouses, and local services that makes high-volume returns management possible at scale.

What’s the problem?

We’ve talked before about the limitations of native returns in Shopify. It’s great for smaller businesses with a low volume of returns. But when they start scaling their Shopify stores, their returns grow too, and those native limitations can become a real bottleneck.

With the native version of Shopify returns, brands have to keep up with:

• Manual approvals for every return
• Adding exchanges to returns by hand
• Emailing shipping instructions and return labels one-by-one
• Manually managing all global and regional carriers
• Warehouse operations
• Long refund times and CS tickets from frustrated customers asking where is their refund

Even for mid-sized sellers, these manual processes add a huge amount of operational strain.

But for larger Shopify stores, the ones scaling to tens of thousands of returns each year, it’s a physical impossibility.

Scaling brands need a scaled-up solution

When larger Shopify stores start to hit these limits, they don’t want to have to look for a new platform. Instead, they add a Shopify returns app – a third-party integration designed to expand the returns features of their existing store.

With an integrated app that specialises in returns (like the ReBound Returns App), they can automate their slow manual processes and automatically sync data to minimise the burden on their teams.

For larger stores, these automated features are the enabler that makes returns management possible at scale.

But while many Shopify returns apps give you these software-level features, they don’t go much further than that.

They’re not backed by the real-world network that makes high-volume returns a smooth and manageable process – one that reduces operational strain across every stage of the returns process.

With the ReBound Returns App, that’s exactly what you get:

1. Real-world logistics

Before launching the ReBound Returns App for brands on Shopify, we spent 15 years working with leading global retailers to help them manage their returns on a huge scale. 

So as well as the software that helps you automate your returns, we’ve got a hard-earned global network of carriers, warehouses, and value-added services – with especially dense networks across Europe, North America, and Australia.

2. An established presence

For larger brands expanding into new territories, there’s a huge range of potential complications:

• Negotiating deals with new carriers
• Shipping and tracking across multiple borders
• Offering the return options that local customers prefer

It’s all adding complexity with each new market. And that complexity gets multiplied as the volume of your returns keeps growing.

With the Rebound Returns App, you can tap into our existing relationships in countries where we already have a foothold – giving you a ‘plug and play’ expansion into new territories without the complexities of setting up your own network.

3. Scalable services at a local level

As your return volumes continue to grow, any waste and inefficiency keep growing with it. You could be looking at:

• Longer return journeys before item verification
• Longer wait times for a refund, and unhappy customers
• Higher transport costs for items that can’t be resold

With a Shopify store connected to the ReBound solution through our  app, you can get all the benefits of our established logistics network, including our local verification and processing hubs that reduce the first-mile journey and process your items early (before they make the costly trip back through multiple regions).

Feeling the strain with Shopify returns?

If you’re scaling a Shopify store that’s hitting 5,000 – 10,000 returns each year, you’ve probably seen the cracks start to appear in your returns management:

• A flood of return requests your teams can’t keep up with
• Skipping steps in return verification just to rush returns through
• Losing stock and potential revenue on returns that seem unsaleable
• High carriers rates eats up your margins
• Waves of returns and refund-related CS tickets instead of a smooth customer experience
• Stock depreciation due to inefficient and long reverse logistics

The native Shopify returns experience wasn’t built for high-volume stores. And a returns app alone can only get you so far.

With the ReBound Returns App, you’re getting the full package: a powerful integration to automate your processes and data, with a proven network of real-world logistics behind it.

So if you’re scaling your store and feeling the strain – book a call with a ReBound returns expert and we’ll show you exactly what we can do.