The cost and effect of a 'keep-everything' returns policy.
Castlery faced a challenge—ask customers to handle product disposal, or pay hundreds of dollars per item returned.
$300
Per Unit Savings
10%
Net Recovery
87%
Fewer Complaints
Furniture retailer Castlery was facing a common e-commerce dilemma: what to do with customer returns? Before implementing Sharetown's reverse logistics solution, their options were limited and costly—often having to enlist the customer's help to dispose of the unwanted item.
Carlos Harper, Senior Operations Manager for Castlery's US and Canada markets, brings a decade of furniture industry experience to his role overseeing operations "My team handles everything from the moment the product gets on the container, until it reaches customers' homes"—including the complicated world of reverse logistics.
Before Sharetown, Castlery's returns process was fragmented and expensive.
“As we scaled, our existing returns process became unsustainable. We often had to choose between writing off the product entirely or paying our carriers expensive one-off fees for pickups, which could run into the hundreds of dollars and erase any chance of recovery.”
With Sharetown, Castlery transformed their returns process with two key improvements:
Perhaps most importantly, Sharetown dramatically reduced customer complaints:
"We probably went from me hearing... five to 10 times a week, something that's been delayed and a customer complaining or escalating internally to now, I hardly hear about it at all on the reverse logistics side."
This improvement addresses what Harper identifies as a critical business need: "The goal for us is to always to create a better customer experience, and the part that a lot of people get wrong is that post-sale support, especially when it comes to returns."
The partnership also allowed Castlery to reallocate resources.
"We've significantly streamlined our reverse logistics process, thanks to this partnership, reducing the manual effort required by our team by nearly half," Harper shares. "A big part of that was not having to manage that inventory after it left our possession."
The simplified reconciliation process has been another big win: "Our finance team is very strict about how we reconcile these payments. The current nature of our contract has saved a lot of time and headaches for me."
Harper has become such a believer in the solution that he's recommended it to industry colleagues:
"When I first started and discovered you guys myself, I actually sent out a few emails to others in the industry like, 'Hey man, I didn't know this existed.'"
His advice to others? "Treat your reverse logistics with the same strategic importance as your outbound shipping. The 'keep everything' policy, believe it or not, isn't a free solution; it's a 100% loss by default and ignores the customer experience. By investing in a true returns partner, like Sharetown, you're not just recovering value from the product itself. You're protecting your brand and building trust with your customers during a critical post-sale moment."
Castlery's experience demonstrates how the right reverse logistics partner can transform returns from a costly operational headache into a streamlined process that enhances customer satisfaction, recovers value, and frees up internal resources for more strategic initiatives.