Zalando becomes even more flexible in its returns policy. From now on, the online retailer will collect orders from customers' homes in London. It also maintains a very short time frame: the online shopper can choose the time when the parcel is picked up.
With this, Zalando hopes to offer customers the best possible online shopping experience. Some consumers still prefer offline shopping, partly because a product ordered online cannot be tried on and returns often cost extra money and time. By eliminating these two objections, Zalando hopes to attract these customers too in the future. Consumers then also pay nothing for the extra service.
Myreturns
The new policy, called 'My Returns on Demand', is being tested in collaboration with UK supplier Myreturns. The trial will last until 18 October and may then be rolled out to other cities. The question is whether the service will remain free even after this rollout.
Read also: Online shops should also listen to their customers
100-day cooling-off period
It remains a mystery how Zalando, with such a lenient return policy, still manages to stay afloat. While the legal cooling-off period for online shops is 14 days, the etailer gives consumers as much as 100 days of cooling-off time, and customers use it to their heart's content: in fact, around half of the products ordered from Zalando are returned. Now that parcels are even collected at home, the number of returns is likely to be even higher.
Profit at last
Yet this flexibility is not harming the retailer. For the first six years, Zalando did not make a profit. At the time, the online shop also received strong criticism of its earnings model. After all, while billions of euros in sales were coming in, processing, delivery and returns meant Zalando still made a loss. In 2014, the online shopping giant managed to make a profit for the first time. It achieved sales of 2.2 billion euros, while profit for the year was 62 million. Zalando thus finally made short shrift of the criticism it had endured for six years.
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