From One Way To Return
Up To Six
Replacement of a single in-box label and a manual customer-service workaround for a D2C womenswear brand, with a specialist returns platform offering six self-serve methods, integrated across Shopify Plus and two warehouses.
-62
%
Returns-Related CS Contacts
1
New Returns Management System
From 1 → 6
Customer-selectable return services.
Client Profile
D2C Contemporary Womenswear Brand
~£40m revenue · ~55k orders/m at peak
Shopify Plus D2C storefront.
Ships to UK & EU.
Two 3PLs: UK and Netherlands.
Single carrier in-box returns.
The Challenge
Every parcel shipped with a pre-printed carrier returns label in the box, drop-off only. If a customer lost the label the only route was to email customer service, who would generate a replacement label by hand and sent it back by email.
The single return option created avoidable customer friction in a category with high return volumes.
The in-box label also created a cost across every outbound parcel through printing, materials and packing activity, despite only a proportion being used.
Why EQ50 DIGITAL
The remit was to define the business requirements, run a vendor-neutral selection across the specialist returns platforms, and own the integration through to handover.
The selected platform provided the carrier network, paperless services and market-level routing that Shopify Plus alone did not provide across the UK and EU operation.
EQ50 DIGITAL helps the client choose the returns platform and makes it work cleanly against Shopify Plus and both warehouses.
The EQ50 DIGITAL Approach
01
Clarify the business priorities
A working session with Ecommerce, CS and Operations set the order: widen customer return options, remove manual label handling, capture clean reason data.
Both warehouses remained in scope, with returns routed by market so UK and EU flows could be managed consistently and received in-region.
02
Diagnose and scope
EQ50 DIGITAL mapped the return flow across both warehouses and analysed three months of order, return and CS-contact data by market and category, including the volume of manual replacement-label requests.
That fed a selection across three platforms, scored on carrier and locker breadth, multi-warehouse handling, QR and label-on-demand capability, Shopify Plus integration maturity and three-year cost.
03
Design the solution
The selected platform was configured to offer the existing carrier drop-off, parcel lockers, additional carriers, further drop-off points, printer-free QR codes and booked home collections, with availability set by market.
The commercial model combined competitive carrier services with a greater mix of lower-cost drop-off and locker options, reducing the projected blended cost per return after platform fees.
The methods that cost materially more to run, such as booked home collection, carry a charge to the customer.
The in-box label was removed in favour of label and QR generation through the platform, issued the moment a customer opens a return.
04
Deliver the change
The platform was integrated with Shopify Plus and both warehouse systems, with advance return notifications flowing to goods-in so each site knew what was arriving and why.
CS was retrained around exception handling rather than label generation.
Key Decisions & Trade-Offs
Platform selection on the right axis.
The contenders were close on customer-facing features, so the decision turned on service coverage in the client’s priority markets, integration with Shopify Plus and both warehouse systems, and three-year cost including platform and per-return fees.
Removing the in-box label.
Moving to label-on-demand saved the cost of a label on every order and widened choice, but added one step at return time and depended on the platform being reliable from day one. Existing in-box labels were honoured during a controlled transition, while new orders moved to on-demand labels and QR codes.
Free methods, with a charge on the costliest to serve.
Cheaper-to-serve methods like drop-off and lockers were free. The methods that cost materially more to run, such as booked home collection, carried a charge.
The pricing model steered demand toward lower-cost services while preserving paid convenience for customers who wanted home collection.