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Christmas Gift Returns Give Retailers A Holiday Hangover
Take it away // Illustration by Kate Walker
After the highs of the holiday shopping season, retailers are prepping for the lows: the post-holiday return season.
Why It Hurts: For many, the week after Christmas is thankfully slow — a time to recoup before the new year. But for retailers, it’s one of the busiest periods as shoppers return the gifts they don’t want. That surge of returns cuts into the outsized revenues brands enjoyed in November and December.
Between The Exchanges: Axios reports that the last days of December and the first couple of weeks of January are known throughout the retail industry as “Returnuary.”
Return rates increase by 25% to 35% starting on December 26th, compared to earlier in the month, per data from Adobe Analytics.
20% to 25% of sales made in 2025 are expected to be returned during this time, amounting to about $1 trillion in products, according to the returns platform Seel.
The average returned item costs between $100 and $200 — which probably means the person has decided the time it takes to return it is worth the effort.
Final Receipt: So, what are people returning? Clothes and shoes usually top the list, mainly because sizing is so hard to get right. Next come accessories like hats and jewelry, followed by electronics and other gadgets. What people don’t return much of are toys and beauty products — items that move through fewer trend cycles.
Here’s something that might blow your mind: According to Emily Hosie, founder and CEO of open-box marketplace REBEL, most returned items get lost in the shuffle because there’s little infrastructure to get them back on shelves. Instead, they become part of the roughly 8.4 billion pounds of returns that end up in landfills every year. Sorry, grandma — it turns out that awful sweater really did wind up in the trash.
Next Order: With AI-powered shopping set to take off next year, it’s possible the rate of returns could change dramatically… but the jury’s still out on whether it’ll go up or down.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.