LOGISTICS, TECH, & SUSTAINABILITY
Collaborations are happening right and left this week with the biggest one, in many ways, being right in your backyard. Happy Returns and Paypal sealed the deal with a strategic acquisition. Keep an eye out for the Google & Shopify partnership and future reuse collaborations.
SUSTAINABILITY
YOUR BRAND NEW RETURNS END UP IN LANDFILLS
Each year, 5 billion pounds of waste is generated through returns. The solution? Welcome to the world of reverse-logistics.
You’ve ordered a new pair of shoes online. They arrive; you rush to the front door and cradle the box as you lift off the lid. You un-tie the laces, guide them toward your feet and… bummer, they don’t fit.
So, back in the box they go and an hour later you drop them at the local collections store. It’s disappointing, but hey, the shoes have never been worn and they’ll be making their way to a new home soon. Right? Wrong.
So what does happen to our apparel when we order online and then return the items? The reality is that much of it simply ends up in landfill. That is, once its been shipped all over the country,
LOGISTICS
PAYPAL ACQUIRES RETURNS LOGISTICS BUSINESS, HAPPY RETURNS
PayPal announced today it’s acquiring Happy Returns, a returns solution provider that offers online shoppers access to easier ways to send back unwanted merchandise to retailers without having to box it up and ship it themselves. The company today offers a network of more than 2,600 drop-off returns locations in the U.S., including those in over 1,200 metros and in every U.S. state.
It also has relationships with hundreds of brands that have been using its returns software and reverse logistics services. The company says it will . . .
TECHNOLOGY
FASHION INDUSTRY ADVANCING TRANSPARENCY, CIRCULARITY – THREAD BY THREAD
Italian, direct-to-consumer, sustainable apparel brand PANGAIA has partnered with connected products innovator EON to create ‘digital passports’ for its products — to enable greater transparency, traceability and circularity in the fashion industry and inspire responsible consumer choices. Powered by a QR code and cloud-hosted digital twin, the digital passports reveal each garment’s unique journey and offer customers access to product-level impact reporting in a more interactive way.
The digital passports, which are printed . . .