Here’s an $846 billion industry you probably don’t think about: Returns. What happens to all that stuff that people send back?
What happens to the stuff no one wantsA lot of things get returned. A lot of things never get bought in the first place.
What do retailers do with it all?
Some of it gets donated, some of it gets sent back to the manufacturer or a retail partner (such as a third-party seller on Amazon), and some of it gets sold to a liquidator for pennies on the dollar.
Once the selected returned or unsold stuff is bundled into big boxes, it moves into what’s called the secondary marketplace. It can be resold in a number of ways, including in places like Dollar General and T.J.Maxx, at flea markets, or through independent shops, both brick-and-mortar and online.
A couple months ago I was looking for a particular tool that would work with the batteries I have for my others. I found it on Facebook marketplace, and messaged the guy, who gave me the address and I went.
In a dilapidated (to be kind) storefront in a nearly vacant strip mall was around 10,000 sq ft of pods of huge cardboard boxes, the footprint the size of a good size kiddie pool, filled or not (depending on how much of it had been sold) with returned merch. The guy I was buying from ran the place, he sold me the thing I came for, and I looked around and in all that detritus found exactly nothing else worth getting. But it was an education in how “returns” work.
Even more of an education was the handmade sign on the door. “New shipments on Friday, first come first served, no more than 20 people in store at a time, others wait in line here”. So there are apparently “return locusts” who descend on the place when the new stuff comes in, and the rest sits there until he decides to put it in the dumpster, haul it to the Salvation Army, or whatever else he does.
The article is from WireCutter, a subsidiary of the Times, and I can’t find a way to guest link it, but maybe it works without it? Anyway, here you go.