What If Your Fashion Returns Came Back to Haunt You?

Imagine this: every item you’ve ever returned shows up at your doorstep.

Piles of packaging. Unworn garments. The exhaust fumes from the delivery trucks still lingering in the air.
It’s not just inconvenient. It’s devastating – for the planet, for brands, and for the future of fashion.

Fashion Returns: The Industry’s Dirty Secret

Fashion returns are often treated as a logistical inconvenience, but the reality is much more alarming. Every time a product is sent back, it requires additional transportation, handling, repackaging – and all too often, disposal.

Let’s break it down:

• 20 – 60% of fashion e-commerce orders are returned.
• Sizing issues are the number one cause of those returns.
• In the U.S. alone, 15 million tons of CO₂ are emitted annually due to returns – that’s the equivalent of emissions from 3 million cars.
• A shocking 20 – 30% of returned garments are never resold. Instead, they’re landfilled, incinerated, or sent to liquidators.
• The 2024 return cost for apparel brands is estimated at $218 billion.

This isn’t just about lost revenue. Fashion returns are fueling overproduction, waste, and climate change.

Where Do Your Returns Actually Go?

Returned items don’t just bounce back onto the shelves. In fast fashion especially, it’s often cheaper to discard them than to inspect, clean, and restock.

Here’s what happens behind the scenes:

• Garments are repackaged in fresh materials, contributing to landfill waste.
• Many are destroyed or forgotten in warehouse purgatory.
• Others are quietly disposed of – out of sight, out of mind.

But the truth is, fashion returns are haunting the supply chain – and our environment – every step of the way.

The Real Cost of a Broken System

The current approach to returns is unsustainable. It’s a system designed to fail:

• Overproduction is baked into planning to compensate for high return rates.
• Bracketing (ordering multiple sizes to try and return the rest) has become normalized.
• Brands struggle with sizing accuracy, leading to missed sales and unhappy customers.

This results in more returns, more waste, and more emissions. It’s a vicious cycle – one that’s silently undermining both sustainability efforts and profitability in fashion e-commerce.

The Solution? Stop the Damage Before It Starts

At SizeSense.ai, we believe that solving the fashion returns crisis starts upstream – with smarter sizing from the very beginning.

Our size recommendation technology helps brands:
✅ Reduce returns through precise size matching
✅ Cut carbon emissions from reverse logistics
✅ Eliminate waste caused by unsellable returns
✅ Design smarter using data-driven insights

By aligning body measurements, garment specs, fabric elasticity, and fit preferences, SizeSense delivers accurate sizing recommendations that build customer trust – and reduce the need for returns.