Kustom's report, which analyzes transaction data from Sweden, Norway, and Finland, states that fashion items worth almost 3 billion SEK are returned annually via the company's infrastructure. While e-commerce as a whole has an average return rate of 5.9 percent, the corresponding figure for fashion retail is 22.8 percent.
Loyalty and Return Frequency
In most product categories, new customers account for the highest return rate, but within fashion, the relationship is reversed. Returning customers return a larger proportion of their purchases compared to new customers. In Sweden, the return rate for returning fashion customers is 28.3 percent, compared to 21.1 percent for new customers. Despite the higher return frequency, returning customers shop more often and account for a large part of the retailers' actual net value.
Women Drive the Volume
Data shows that women return a higher proportion of their purchases than men. In Sweden, the return rate is 27.3 percent for women and 18.2 percent for men. Despite this, female customers account for an average of 75 percent of fashion retailers' net order value.
Looking at age, the return rate falls almost linearly as the customer gets older. Women aged 18–29 have the highest return rate, returning 34.5 percent of what they shop for in Sweden. The lowest return rate on all analyzed markets is found among men over 60, where Norwegian men in this age category remain at 8.2 percent. There are also geographical differences; cities consistently have a higher return volume than rural areas. In Sweden, 27.9 percent of fashion purchases are returned in urban areas, compared to 20 percent in rural areas.
More Expensive Goods Generate More Returns
The report highlights that a higher price does not reduce the proportion of returns. On the contrary, it is the premium segment (goods over 1000 SEK) that shows the highest return rate in both Sweden and Finland. This difference is most pronounced in Finland, where premium goods have a return rate of 30.6 percent, compared to 18.6 percent for mid-price goods.
Jesper Eriksson, Chief Commercial Officer at Kustom, comments on the report:
We share these insights because return data, when used correctly, is one of the most underutilized business signals in Nordic e-commerce. We simply think more people should have access to that picture.
New Function for Tracking Return Data
To facilitate e-commerce companies in managing their return patterns strategically, and to understand which returns signal friction in the customer journey, Kustom is launching a new function in its insight tool. The function makes it possible to continuously track return rates over time and break down the development per customer segment.
Rasmus Fahlander, Chief Product Officer at Kustom, explains the purpose:
Returns only become really useful when they are put into context. By making it easier to track return data over time and identify behavioral patterns, we want to give more retailers access to insights that can be acted upon, which were previously mainly reserved for the largest players.