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RETAILERS

Consumer Returns

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NOT A LOT OF GOOD OPTIONS!

Product returns are a reality for all U.S. retailers. The bigger the retailer, the bigger the challenge. For large scale retailers such as Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot or Target, there might well be over 100,000 separate model styles on their sales floor at any one time. Anything and everything they sell has an opportunity to be returned. It is not unusual to see overall return rates of 10% or higher of their sales. Management of those returns is therefore a core part of their business and has a direct and significant impact on their bottom lines. Once a product comes back to a store and it has been opened and used for even a minute, it can no longer be safely returned to the sales floor.

The product may be dirty, missing some of its component parts or accessories and may have sensitive personal customer data recorded in them. Historically, there have been only three options; (1) Return to Vendor (“RTV”), (2) Destroy in Field (“DIF”) or (3) Liquidate them for whatever price they can get. All of these options have significant financial or environmental costs associated with them. Recently, some retailers have been so overwhelmed with their product returns that they have come up with a 4th option… and have started giving consumers refunds for their returns and telling them to just “keep the product”. At Sohnen, we believe that we offer a much better solution….arguably the very best possible solution.

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Is the Best Option!

Selling your product returns to Sohnen maximizes your financial recovery. Most liquidators pay merely pennies on the dollar for product returns. Their intention is to resell them, unprocessed for whatever they can get for them. Some will wind up in landfill. Some will get resold with sensitive and personal consumer data imbedded in them creating genuine security issues. Some will end up getting returned back to the retailer a second time by fraudulent individuals taking advantage of relatively lax return policies in place.  Throwing products into landfills, especially if they contain hazardous materials can be illegal at worst and unethical at best. Returning the products to the supplier may be the easiest approach, but it doesn’t avoid many of the negatives mentioned above. 

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Sohnen is not a liquidator. We are a refurbisher. We re-process product returns. Liquidation is one step away from

the landfill and refurbished goods are one step away from a new consumer. By maximizing the product’s value, Sohnen is able to provide significantly higher recoveries to our retail suppliers, while guaranteeing that all sensitive consumer data will be removed and all products that cannot be refurbished will get properly recycled. In the process, our retail partners receive extensive production data reports that enable them to interface with their suppliers to make product quality improvements and to also better understand the return behavior and patterns on their individual stores and regions. Some retailers take it to an even higher level of recovery by purchasing back some the products they sell to us so they can resell it themselves on their own online outlets.  No two retailers are alike. Sohnen prides itself in working together with its retail suppliers to custom design unique programs that work best for them. 

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