Featuring Richard Van Marion, Global Client Director, Rebound

Retailers are diversifying how they sell—TikTok Shops, Instagram, Zalando, their own websites, even pop-up retail—and that explosion in channel variety brings a sharp increase in complexity, particularly around returns. Richard Van Marion of Rebound took to the DELIVER Europe 2025 stage to explore how retailers can streamline, standardise, and monetise returns across all these touchpoints.

Returns as a Growth Lever

Too often, returns are treated as a cost centre. But Van Marion challenges this view, urging retailers to see them as a lever for both top-line growth and bottom-line efficiency. He points out that poor returns visibility can erode resale rates and drive up customer acquisition costs—already 4–5x higher than in 2019. Streamlining returns can directly influence retention, resale, and loyalty.

Why Multichannel Returns Are Broken

The average retailer is selling on 4 to 7 channels—and many go beyond 10. Each channel has its own policies, SLAs, refund mechanics, and expectations. Van Marion calls out the customer expectation: buyers expect to return from anywhere, instantly, and cheaply. Failing to deliver creates friction and brand damage.

Fraud, Costs & Lost Revenue

Returns fraud accounts for an estimated 10% of returns globally, while resale rates remain worryingly low—hovering between 60–70%. Van Marion notes that many retailers lack the data infrastructure to even measure these metrics. Rebound's platform addresses this through integrated returns data, early-stage fraud detection, and localisation of return logistics.

Dynamic Routing and Localised Processing

A core innovation presented is Rebound’s development of dynamic return routing. Instead of shipping every return back to a central hub, Rebound’s system can decide—at the moment of return initiation—whether the product should be fast-tracked for resale, sent to an off-price partner, or even held locally. This not only cuts costs, but also speeds up resale and improves customer satisfaction.

Aligning Digital and Physical Worlds

Van Marion stresses that winning in returns means tightly coupling the digital layer (return initiation, fraud detection, refund automation) with the physical layer (carrier services, warehouses, marketplaces). Rebound’s modular platform integrates across all of these, enabling rapid refunds and unified data analysis.

Final Word: Turn Returns into Revenue

"Returns don’t have to be chaotic," Van Marion concluded. "They can be strategic. They can be optimised. And most importantly, they can drive growth." For brands navigating dozens of sales channels, Rebound offers a way to simplify operations, protect margins, and earn loyalty—one smart return at a time.