Shopping online has become a new habit in this pandemic situation. The lockdown policy forced people to stay at home in order to stay safe from the virus. The practicability and cheaper price than in-store become the two main reasons why people, especially Gen Z like to do it the most. Just stay safe at home and customers will get the products. Easy!
Seeing this trend, many businesses are now moving online. Selling products on social media, marketplace, and websites could increase their sales rather than selling in-store only. However, for some businesses, selling online is not as easy as selling in-store. One of the reasons is customers’ expectations of the product. They always expect a good quality product just by seeing the picture. On the other hand, customers could see and touch the products when shopping in-store, before they decided to buy them.
This situation often brings a quality issue that leads to packages returning to the sellers. According to the National Retail Federation, consumers returned an estimated $428 billion in merchandise in 2020.
What happens to those returned products?
As stated on Bloomberg, American customers will return more than 1 million packages to e-commerce retailers every day in December. It is a flood of unwanted stuff that is expected to peak on January 2nd, which UPS Inc. calls “National Returns Day.”
Those returned packages are a real problem. In the U.S. alone, around 5 billion pounds will end up in the landfill, and an additional 15 million tons of carbon emitted from the transportation of returns in 2020 into the atmosphere.
What businesses should do?
The environment becomes the most affected by this returning activity. To minimize these environmental issues, some businesses are now allowing the customers to keep the products and give a discount voucher for the next purchase rather than repack and send the product back to the warehouse. However, it will bring a bad reputation to the brand. Customers might give a bad review of the brand and this will influence your potential customers.
The effective way to minimize returning packages is to make sure the product quality. Conducting product quality control in Indonesia can be a solution. There are several quality control services that you can perform, such as:
Factory Audit
One of the advantages of importing textile and apparel goods from Indonesia is that you can diversify your suppliers’ base. The next question is, is that easy to work with a new supplier? Unfortunately, the answer is no!
There are always chances to meet scam and fraud suppliers. Conducting a factory audit in Indonesia will give you more benefits, such as allow you to avoid scams and inexperienced vendors, compare potential vendors and select reliable sources, check the factory’s experience in manufacturing your products, and other detailed information about the supplier you want to work with.
Product Inspection
Product inspection is the key element of quality control in Indonesia. This service will give you detailed information about your product’s quality from the very beginning until it will be shipped. For example, pre-production inspection is really beneficial for importers who want to work with a new supplier. Because this inspection is performed before the production, it enables you to ensure the conformity of the raw material used to manufacture your products and to get a clear vision of the production schedule.
Contact us for more information about quality control in Indonesia.