Peak season drives revenue. January drives regret. Returns spike, warehouses jam up, and customers expect refunds yesterday. In this reverse logistics webinar, Josh Camacho, COO of Bungii, sits down with Disney Petit, CEO of LiquiDonate, to break down why returns have quietly become the most expensive part of peak season and how smarter redistribution, donation, and delivery strategies can turn that post-holiday headache into a real competitive edge.
Welcome and Introductions
Lauren Mitchell:
Hi everyone and welcome. Thanks for joining today’s discussion. We’ll be talking about navigating the biggest post-peak problem for retailers, which is returns. I’m Lauren Mitchell from Bungii and I’ll be moderating today’s conversation. I’m so excited to introduce our two guests here. We have Disney Petit, the CEO of LiquiDonate, and Josh Camacho, the Chief Operating Officer of Bungii. I’ll let them introduce themselves properly. Disney, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and LiquiDonate?
Disney Petit:
Thanks so much for having me, Lauren, and the Bungii team. It’s great to be here as partners of Bungii. My name is Disney. I’m based in the Bay Area. And prior to founding LiquiDonate four years ago, I was the 15th employee at Postmates. So I spent about a decade building out last mile delivery logistics as we know it today. And while I was there, I was really passionate about building a product called Food Fight that matched all the excess food from the restaurants we worked with with shelters in 700 cities across the US.
After the 10 years I was there and we were acquired by Uber, I decided to take the biggest problem that we’d solved, which was how do we match prepared to go food from restaurants with nonprofits and shelters who need it, and solve the second biggest problem, which is how do we move and donate big and bulky products from retailers when eight out of 10 of those items are ending up in the landfill, even though they’re still in usable condition. And so in the last four years, since I founded LiquiDonate, the team and I have been able to work with over 4,000 nonprofits to help save over 12 million items from ending up in the landfill. So we’re just getting started and excited that Bungii is one of our great 3PL partners to help us move that big and bulky product.
Lauren Mitchell:
Yeah, that’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that story, Disney. And Josh, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and Bungii?
Josh Camacho:
Yeah, absolutely. Hey everybody, Josh Camacho here. I am the Chief Operating Officer for Bungii. In a prior life, I was in retail management, so very familiar with returns, post-peak season spikes, and that whole shebang. So excited to have that conversation today. If you don’t know much about Bungii, we are a final mile, same day delivery partner, and we are built solely and completely focused on the big and bulky piece. As Disney mentioned, we partnered together with LiquiDonate to handle that big and bulky merchandise. And we work nationwide with retailers and other logistics providers and other platforms to help provide final, mile, reliable, fast, flexible delivery for those big and bulky goods. Especially when there are demand spikes, we can come in and provide additional capacity for those instances. And yeah, I think this is gonna be a great conversation with Disney on how to kind of handle those returns, particularly big and bulky and how we partner together to make that happen.
The post-peak returns spike
Lauren Mitchell:
So obviously you both bring a pretty unique perspective to the conversation. I think everyone understands what a pressure cooker peak season is, right? But then many may not think about what happens once the holiday season is over and there’s that influx of returns. So for retailers, that means a buildup of back of inventory and extra costs. So what we’re looking to talk about today is how can we use different reverse logistics strategies and redistribution strategies like Disney had mentioned, how can that actually be an opportunity for retailers? Josh, one statistic that I saw recently is that for some retail segments, post-peak returns can actually spike up 30%. From a delivery perspective, what does that mean to you?
Josh Camacho:
Yeah, that is a pretty incredible stat when you think of, you know, any 10 items sold, three of those could be returned. Like that’s, that’s a huge number. And while that can easily be identified as a problem to be solved, I actually think you can turn it on its head and think of it as what an opportunity to create a lifetime customer. And the reason you can think that way is there’s a consumer report in 2023 from Navar and it stated that 92 % of customers who have an easy and hassle-free return experience, they will decide to come back and make another purchase with that same retailer. So returns really can be used as a loyalty test for brands. And unfortunately, a lot of brands are failing that right now. And so there’s opportunity in the marketplace to really focus in, identify where your opportunity gaps are within the returns cycle.
And if you can get that right, it’s a tool. It’s a tool to increase customer loyalty. It’s a tool to increase your lifetime value to your customers and really separate your brand from your competition. And so not to say that it’s an easy problem to solve. That’s why a lot of retailers don’t do it very well yet. But hopefully we can talk about some of those specific pain points later on in this conversation and help some of these retailers improve in that area.
Why retailers struggle with returns
Lauren Mitchell:
You mentioned it yourself, it’s not easy for retailers. Why is this such a struggle for them? What are those biggest pain points that the retailers and shippers are struggling with on the ground?
Josh Camacho:
I think a lot of systems are set up in a way to provide a good experience to the customer on the outbound piece. So there’s tracking, there’s the visibility, there’s constant updates, there’s expectation set, and all that is very visible to the end consumer upfront. But when it comes to the reverse logistics piece, when there’s a return, a lot of that goes out the window.
And what that creates is a poor customer experience, right? So when there’s visibility breakdown, expectation breakdown on the customer side, then it falls through. And the pain point, the problem that the shipper and retailers are having is a lot of them, don’t have the technology in place. They don’t have the right carrier network in place. They aren’t built around the return piece, which is fair, right? Because this is a small portion of the overall annual throughput in their companies, but it is becoming bigger and bigger as sales increase and it also is becoming more of an opportunity that can be leveraged for customer satisfaction. So I would say that the visibility breakdown piece is a huge pain point for retailers and shippers. I would also say for the post peak timeframe like labor whiplash would probably be another one that I’d throw out there as these retailers, have to staff accordingly. And so they plan all through the year, especially last quarter for December 25th. And once December 25th hits, it feels like you can kind of relax and take your deep sigh of relief. But then what happens in January, right? Or what some people term as Returnuary, where all the returns are flowing in and you need to have staff ready, need to have technology in place, they can process that, you need to have your procedures in place, and all that is, they’re difficult, it’s difficult to have those large retailers teams focus on that when so much of it is focused on sales.
Redistribution and the circular economy
Lauren Mitchell:
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that all makes sense. The proactive scheduling is definitely something that can help and help stores from getting gridlocked, right? I think I’m going to switch gears here now. Disney, I want to go back to what happens when the trucks roll back. Not every return can go back on the shelf, right? So can you talk about some smarter alternative redistribution strategies that you’re seeing?
Disney Petit:
Yeah, so there’s two ways that we really view the ability to redistribute returns to their most appropriate disposition outcome. And when we think about the most appropriate disposition outcome, the first thing we think about is from the retailer’s perspective is which way are they going to be able to recoup the most value. And so that could be a variety of different ways. One, of course, is resale. We want to be able to return that product to the warehouse if they know they’re going to be able to resell it for the same price that it went out the door at. If that’s still a value to them, then of course, we want to resell it. When we’re thinking about the circular economy, which is what we built or what we’re a part of at LiquiDonate, we think about the reduce, reuse, recycle side of this. And so we want to obviously reduce the amount of product that’s being made that is no longer needed. But
In order to do that, we need to reuse the items that are already in existence and we need to make sure that we are recycling or reselling the products that are already in existence as well. And so we have two ways that we do that. One way is that we work directly with the warehouses and distribution centers where those trucks have come back to, you know, maybe they’ve had pallets and boxes and maybe even truckloads pile up over time. And so we’ve built a web app where they’re able to upload that product in bulk and donate it to nonprofits and schools where we coordinate the donation location of where it needs to go and then using partners like Bungii, that’s how we actually process the movement of those goods so that these warehouses and retailers don’t actually have to coordinate that themselves. So that’s one way that we work on the logistics side of getting that product that has been sitting around, whether it was overstock, maybe damaged. Even damaged in this case is sometimes, you know, the box was dented. And so the product inside is still perfectly usable. And then sometimes,
The other big use case for dispositioning the product is actually at the point of return. And so when the customer goes online to make a return, if a retailer is using our software, we actually will provide the best disposition outcome for it based on what the retailer wants. And so let’s say that everything that was in the sale category, the retailer knows, hey, we already marked this as a discount. We know we don’t want it back at the warehouse. Instead of shipping it all the way back to the warehouse, our system will instantly provide a shipping label or a pickup scheduler for the customer to be able to route that to an appropriate nonprofit. And so in the case of apparel and small really shippable items, we’re just producing a shipping label. The customer has the same experience as they would have had otherwise. But in the world of big and bulky, which is something that is really focused on what Bungii does with us, we’re able to take products like mattresses and actually schedule a courier to show up at the customer’s home to pick that product up and take it to a nonprofit. And I don’t know about you, but I, you know, as someone who lives in a big city, I’m tired of seeing mattresses on street corners. And so being able to solve the problem of mattresses, furniture, these big and bulky items that otherwise would likely end up on street corners, retailers might tell you to keep it because it’s just so expensive to ship it back, drives returns fraud. There’s a lot of different reasons why dispositioning the product in an appropriate manner makes the most sense for the retailer.
Lauren Mitchell:
Yeah, and when you’re talking about that, when it makes the most sense for the retailer, what does it look like when redistribution strategies aren’t planned out? Is there anything you can think of that gets left on the table for that retailer?
Disney Petit:
Yes, I would say that there’s a lot of donation has been a bit of a dirty word in the in the retail industry depending on which section of retail you’re talking about. when we’re thinking about the original statistic that you shared around the 30 % of increase in returns for peak season like that really resonates with us because we see a lot of people buying product and then
returning it. And that 30 % is not the average. The average for the nation is 16 % of all purchased products are returned. And so when we think about that number going up to 30%, that’s a big jump.
Lauren Mitchell:
Significant, yep.
Disney Petit:
And in some categories like apparel, it’s going to be really high in categories like luxury. You know, we see maybe like a two to 3 % return rate. And so it really does depend on the category, but with big and bulky, it makes such a big difference to be able to actually know that someone’s going to be able to come pick that product up, take it to somewhere local that needs it, and then be able to get it out of your house. If you’re a customer that orders a mattress or piece of furniture and you really don’t want it and the retailer decides sells you to keep it because it’s cheaper and easier for them to do that as it is today. That’s not the best experience for the customer. So I think all of this kind of goes back to what Josh was talking about originally as well, which is the customer experience here is important and being able to really offer them that transparency of, hey, these companies are working together with us, or maybe it’s even white labeled if the retailer doesn’t want them to know about it for a variety of reasons.
This means that the customer is going to have a streamlined experience, the retailer is going to experience less cost and less fraud.
Connecting delivery and redistribution
Lauren Mitchell:
Yep. Yeah, no, that’s exactly what I was just thinking too. Like what we’re talking about here, these two conversations aren’t siloed. The returns, the reverse logistics, transportation, redistribution, it’s all feeding into one another. And I think you just mentioned some ways that your worlds are connecting.
What do you think, Josh? What’s the risk here if delivery and redistribution is thought separately instead of a connected system?
Josh Camacho:
Yeah, I think that it’s almost impossible to completely separate them. So that shouldn’t be the goal. I mean, there’s a lot of similar networks, resources, facilities, assets that are being used for both the delivery and the redistribution piece, right? So to try to completely break them apart would just be inefficient. It wouldn’t be effective. You’d probably lose coordination and visibility and efficiency.
So I don’t think that would be the goal to completely separate them, but it’s probably not the goal to completely have them all together, like doing the exact same things either, right? Because redistribution has its own specific unique elements that needs to be within kind of the ecosystem. I think that it probably needs to look something like, I don’t know, to use like a dumb sports analogy.
Like instead of it being like football where you have offense that they’re offensive players, this unit only plays offense. There’s no overlap with the defensive unit who only plays defense. That’s all they do. It needs to look more like a basketball team or a soccer team where within the ecosystem of that team, which is everything in the network that’s doing delivery or redistribution or returns, they have knowledge and they understand how to play both offense and defense. They know what situationally, what to do, when to do it. And if they have that knowledge, that training, that understanding of what’s most efficient, what’s most cost effective for all the stakeholders, then that’s when they’re gonna be most effective.
Lauren Mitchell:
Everyone loves a sports analogy, right? Thanks for taking it to something that we can all relate to.
Advice for retailers preparing for peak
Lauren Mitchell:
Disney, if you were advising a retailer planning for the next peak, which is probably people right now, what’s one change you tell them to make before the search hits?
Disney Petit:
Returns are a pain in the ass.
Returns are growing year over year. And so I think that it is something that retailers are really starting to pay attention to, especially with the rise of e-commerce and consumer behavior around bracketing where they’ll buy three sizes of one product, return the two that they don’t want, keep the one that they do want. A lot of times the customers don’t know that like the cost of shipping that product back to the retailer for them to restock it is substantial enough that it often ends up in the trash. Like,
I think if more consumers knew this hidden secret of retail that they would be less likely to do these practices and less likely to make these returns. But I don’t think that there’s any reason that the retail industry today is going to make a change to make that more public or make that a more prominent statement. And so by working within the system with the retailers is the way that we have focused. So building out a Shopify app that retailers can download to route their returns that they do not want back for resale to nonprofits is one way. The implementation of our app for returns is immediate. They can download it and within 15 minutes have their first workflow set up. And so for retailers that are really thinking about, like for this return season… we don’t want to see anything that was in the clearance category or maybe they wanna do a price point like anything under $50. Like we know those are not worth it for our brand to see those back at the And so it’s possible that they would be able to download that Shopify app and go ahead and implement that today so that they can start seeing how it works before the peak returns start. Secondly, on the overstock side of the product, of course,
On the on the oversight or on the on the overstock side of what’s at the warehouse Clearing out that space to be able to make sure that there’s room for those returns to come in so that they can be sorted is also something to think about in advance and So being able to use a solution like our bulk upload tool To be able to get those boxes and pallets out of the warehouse so that you can have more room to sort The inbound product that you do plan on reselling is also very helpful. So we also look at it as a more solution? Like how do we take care of the fact that your warehouse is full already of the product that you’ve been collecting year-round and then how do we prevent it from filling up again?
Audience Q&A and closing remarks
Lauren Mitchell:
Well, that was really great. I think that that’s some really good stuff that, you know, retailer listening to this can take as a follow-up from this. So I actually want to now just take a second to ask the audience if they have any questions in particular for Josh or Disney.
Okay, we have one here. And let’s see, Josh, if you had to summarize in one sentence, what does getting reverse logistics right look like?
Josh Camacho:
In one sentence, I would say speed of processing. And if I could break that down a little bit, it would be the traditional like measure of success for an outbound delivery, like a customer receiving it is that they receive it on time in full, that it is exactly how they wanted it when they wanted it. And returns, it kind of flips out on its head and it’s actually
The measure of success is how quickly, I’m looking into my app and into my bank account, is that refund back in my bank account, right? That is like the measure of success. So it’s crunching down that processing time, and that includes the picking up of the product from the customer or then taking it to some consolidation, Whole Foods or something like that for Amazon, getting it to the DC or warehouse, having that processed, and then… maybe shipped to redistribution or something like that to a donation center and then payment process back in the customer’s bank, right? So it’s eliminating or shrinking that whole cycle as much as you can is what a successful return looks like in my mind.
Lauren Mitchell:
I think that is a perfect way to end this segment. So Josh and Disney, thank you so much for your time today. I hope this gave everyone watching some new ways to think about the biggest post-peak problem returns and turning it into a more sustainable, customer-friendly process. Thanks for everyone who turned in. We’ll drop a replay link in case you want to rewatch or share. Until next time, take care. Thank you.
