Archive for category: News Releases

BURLINGTON, MA – Returnalyze, a leader in AI-powered operational intelligence for retail returns prevention, today announced the appointment of Marc Schneider as a Strategic Advisor. Schneider brings more than 35 years of executive leadership across retail and wholesale to Returnalyze, and will play a pivotal role in expanding the company’s reach across the retail industry – a market where the platform’s impact is most immediate and measurable.

Mr. Schneider is a highly accomplished executive in the global retail and branded consumer markets. He served most recently as Chief Executive Officer of Kenneth Cole Productions, where he oversaw the company’s retail, outlet, e-commerce, international, licensing, and wholesale operations. Prior to that, he was Group President of Heritage Brands at PVH Corp., managing the dress, furnishings, sportswear, licensing, and retail divisions. His earlier career included senior executive roles at The Timberland Company, Macy’s, and Melville Corporation/Bob’s Stores, where was an owner and officer. He currently serves on seven boards, including Centric Brands, NAADAM, and The Saatva Company, and is Executive-in-Residence at TZP Group and Senior Advisor at AlixPartners. 

“Marc brings to Returnalyze something that can’t be manufactured, which is genuine credibility and a first-hand understanding of retail executives’ top priorities,” said Rick Cramer, Returnalyze CEO and board member. “Returns are one of the biggest unresolved cost centers in retail, and Marc has lived that challenge from the C-suite. His ability to translate what Returnalyze does into the language of merchants, operators, and brand leaders will be invaluable as we scale. We couldn’t be more excited to have him in our corner.”

Mr. Schneider will serve in a multi-faceted advisory capacity, providing executive-level guidance across commercial strategy, business development, and market positioning. 

“Throughout my career, returns have been treated as an unavoidable cost of doing business. What Returnalyze is doing is fundamentally different. It offers retailers the diagnostic power to understand why products come back and to truly drive profitable growth, improve the customer experience, and increase customer lifetime value,” said Marc Schneider. “I’ve sat in those rooms. I know how much money is left on the table. The mission Returnalyze is on to make returns a solvable problem rather than a permanent one, is one I believe in completely, and I’m looking forward to helping them bring it to the leaders who need it most.”

Returnalyze’s AI platform uniquely aggregates structured operational data, such as return reason codes, product attributes, supply chain data, with unstructured customer signals such as reviews and shopper feedback, providing a 360-degree view of return behavior no other solution delivers. The platform pinpoints root causes, prescribes corrective actions to the appropriate teams across e-commerce, merchandising, product, and supply chain, and measures the financial impact of every intervention. For a $1 billion retailer running a 7% return rate, the addressable problem can represent $70 million or more in recoverable value and margin uplift.

About Returnalyze

Returnalyze is the leading AI-powered operational decision intelligence platform for returns prevention. By combining structured operational data with unstructured customer signals, Returnalyze gives retailers a single, comprehensive view of their returns, including root cause identification, cross-functional action recommendations, benchmarking against industry peers, and closed-loop ROI measurement. Returnalyze helps retailers turn one of their most persistent cost centers into a meaningful source of margin improvement. Clients include Abercrombie & Fitch, J.Crew, Wolverine World Wide, and Brooks Running.

BURLINGTON, MA – Returnalyze, the leading AI-powered decision intelligence platform for retail returns prevention, today announced that global fashion brand MESHKI has adopted its platform to strengthen its customer experience and reduce preventable returns across its international footprint.

As a digital-first retailer operating at scale, MESHKI sought a solution that could illuminate the underlying drivers of returns and provide clear, actionable guidance for improvement. 

Returnalyze’s platform analyzes customer signals and return patterns to surface SKU-level insights and prescriptive recommendations that help retailers optimize product content, sizing guidance, and merchandising decisions.

Since implementation, MESHKI’s teams have integrated Returnalyze’s automated insights into their workflows, enabling faster identification of product-specific issues and more informed updates to the online shopping experience.

“Returnalyze has equipped us with the intelligence needed to take a more proactive approach to returns prevention,” said Michael Quach, Chief Financial Officer at MESHKI. “The platform’s clarity and accessibility have been instrumental in accelerating our progress.”

Rick Cramer, Chief Executive Officer at Returnalyze, added, “MESHKI is exactly the kind of forward-thinking global brand that demonstrates what’s possible when returns prevention is treated as a strategic priority. By embedding our decision intelligence directly into their workflows, MESHKI’s teams can now move from insight to action faster than before.”

About Returnalyze 

Returnalyze is the industry’s leading AI returns decision intelligence platform purpose-built to reduce retail returns and improve margins. Created by retail experts, Returnalyze automates root-cause analysis and actionable recommendations that empower merchandising, eCommerce, product, and supply-chain strategy leaders to act immediately on the issues driving costly returns.

About MESHKI

Founded in Sydney in 2013 by two then architecture students, MESHKI blends contemporary trends with timeless design principles rooted in form, structure and intentionality. Each collection is informed by a commitment to refined craftsmanship and confident femininity, ensuring every piece endures season after season.

Today, MESHKI is a global brand shipping to over 190 countries. Worn by women worldwide, including leading creators and international talent, MESHKI is evolving its design language through elevated construction and the introduction of MESHKI Atelier, a new chapter centred on artistry, detail and modern sophistication.

MESHKI empowers confidence and celebrates authenticity, making every wearer feel bold, beautiful and unforgettable – wherever she is in the world.

BURLINGTON, MA – Returnalyze, Inc., the industry’s leading AI-powered retail returns prevention platform, today released its 2025 Retail Peak-Season Returns Performance Report, revealing a striking divide between retailers with active returns prevention strategies and the broader market.

The report’s headline finding stands in sharp contrast to the mounting returns crisis facing the broader retail industry: among retailers with active returns prevention strategies, overall return rates shifted by just +0.1 percentage points year-over-year across holiday peak-season periods – a remarkable show of stability at a time when the National Retail Federation reports U.S. retailers processed more than $850 billion in total returns last year.

“While the industry continues to grapple with surging return rates and the margin pressure that comes with them, this data makes clear that a proactive prevention strategy can bend the curve,” said Rick Cramer, CEO of Returnalyze. “The most efficient return is the one that never happens – and retailers who invest in the right predictive tools are proving that every day.”

Key Findings

• Clear and Predictable Seasonal Curve – The report identifies a consistent pattern across apparel and footwear: return rates peak in the four weeks leading into Black Friday and steadily decline as the season progresses toward Christmas. In several categories, return rates fell from early-season highs of 26% to late-season lows near 20%, reflecting a well-documented shift from exploratory self-purchasing to more decisive, gift-oriented buying.
• High-Return Categories Remain a Persistent Challenge – Certain categories continue to post structurally elevated return rates regardless of season timing. Dresses recorded return rates as high as 48.2% year-over-year in the pre-Black Friday window, while denim exceeded 51% in the early season and remained above 45% even in the lowest-return period. These categories, the report notes, represent the greatest opportunity for targeted intervention precisely because their return behavior is both persistent and predictable.
• Meaningful Improvement is Achievable – Not all categories told the same story. Outerwear demonstrated that strategic investment in fit, product clarity, and customer guidance can drive measurable results — early-season return rates in the category declined from 41.7% to 37% year-over-year. Retailers that invested in predictive analytics, enhanced product content, and proactive customer engagement achieved double-digit reductions in return rates within targeted categories during the 2025 season.
• Footwear Presents a Mixed Picture – Footwear performance varied considerably by subcategory. Boots improved in the post-Cyber Week period, declining from 31% to 29%, while sandals saw early-season return rates rise from 22.6% to 25.9% year-over-year in the pre-Black Friday window — underscoring the degree to which materials, construction, and silhouette drive return behavior at the attribute level.
• Size Bracketing Remains Low But Consequential – Across all categories, size-bracketing adoption ranged between 5% and 9%, with minimal year-over-year movement. While low in absolute terms, bracketing behavior contributes meaningfully to early-season return spikes. The report identifies an opportunity for retailers to reduce unprofitable bracketing through enhanced size guidance tools, while strategically promoting bracketing in categories where it supports conversion and margin.

Strategic Recommendations

The report translates its findings into five actionable strategies for retail leaders: prioritizing fit and product clarity in high-return categories; addressing attribute-level return drivers through enhanced PDP content; expanding size-recommendation tools to influence bracketing behavior; building cross-functional alignment between merchandising, product, and eCommerce teams around return data; and investing in long-term predictive capabilities to systematically reduce return risk.

About the Report

The 2025 Retail Peak-Season Returns Performance Report is based on millions of transactions analyzed using Returnalyze’s proprietary AI algorithms, drawing on data from a defined segment of U.S. fashion, apparel, and footwear retailers with active returns prevention strategies. The analysis covers three distinct peak-season windows: the four weeks prior to Black Friday, Black Friday through Cyber Week, and post-Cyber Week through Christmas, across both the 2024 and 2025 holiday seasons.

About Returnalyze

Returnalyze is the industry’s leading AI decision intelligence platform purpose-built to prevent retail returns. Created by retail experts, it delivers real-time, SKU-level insights and recommendations that empower merchandising, eCommerce, product, and supply-chain leaders to identify and act immediately on the issues that drive returns. Today, the world’s leading retailers rely on Returnalyze to protect margin, strengthen product performance, and create frictionless customer experiences.

BURLINGTON, MA — Returnalyze, the retail industry’s leading AI-powered retail returns prevention company, has named veteran high-tech executive Rick Cramer as CEO. Cramer will leverage over 20 years of successful senior leadership experience to oversee all aspects of the company’s operations, with a focus on driving revenue growth of Returnalyze’s SaaS product offering and on taking the company to the next level of success and industry category dominance.

“Rick Cramer brings a wealth of expertise in building successful technology companies from the ground up,” said Scott Savitz, Founder and Managing Partner at Data Point Capital, lead investor at Returnalyze. “Rick has a proven track record of success in growing and scaling companies from $5M-$10M to well over $250M in annual recurring revenue.”

Throughout Cramer’s career, he has been instrumental in building several technology companies from early-stage to IPO with over $2B in market value. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President of Growth Products at Tricentis, through its acquisition of Neotys. He has also served in senior leadership positions at other highly successful venture-backed companies such as Signiant, Centra Software and Avid Technology.

“I could not be more excited about the opportunity at Returnalyze, and am looking forward to building upon the successful impact our solutions are making on our customers’ businesses, and, in turn, on our investors and partners,” said Cramer. “Returnalyze has enjoyed triple-digit revenue growth over each of the past three years since bringing its product to market. Most exciting to me, however, is a world-class team building best-in-class products that are being used by many of the world’s largest, forward-thinking retailers. And yet, we are clearly still in the early innings of what we are able to achieve and accomplish in the ‘returns’ category.”

Already Returnalyze works with many of the world’s largest retailers, such as J.Crew, Brooks Running, Wolverine and Perry Ellis, who depend on Returnalyze’s AI recommendations, best practices and industry benchmarking capabilities.

According to Will Plourde, CTO of Returnalyze: “Returns are a huge cost for retailers—it’s common to see some retailers’ returns as high as 15-30% of sales—and Returnalyze leverages its purpose-built AI software to not only mitigate the financial and logistical impact of returns but also uncover hidden revenue opportunities.” As Plourde describes it, “With every return, customers are sending signals back to the retailer. Harnessing and analyzing the massive volume of those signals—insights about size and fit, products, brands, suppliers, webpages, stores and more—is actually a task perfectly suited for AI. The Returnalyze AI has been designed specifically for retail returns, and continuously analyzes tens of millions of data points. More importantly, the AI analysis doesn’t just tell you what’s going on and why, it tells you exactly what to do next. You get very crisp, data-driven prescriptive recommendations on where returns can be reduced.”

In a recent report from the National Retail Federation (NRF), returns totaled $743 billion in 2023, representing 14.5% of total sales. At this volume and scale, Cramer emphasized, “you really need AI to identify where the AI-recommended optimizations will have the biggest impact so that you can prioritize the actions. And Returnalyze does this from Day One.”

Concludes Plourde: “Our technology is allowing retailers to benefit from what otherwise has always been viewed simply as a major challenge. As a result, our customers are saving millions every year while providing a significantly better customer experience. And we couldn’t be more thrilled to have Rick Cramer, with his product, sales and management experience, to lead the team as we continue to help retailers succeed all over the world.”

About Returnalyze

Returnalyze is the industry’s leading AI decision intelligence platform purpose-built to prevent retail returns. Created by retail experts, it delivers real-time, SKU-level insights and recommendations that empower merchandising, eCommerce, product, and supply-chain leaders to identify and act immediately on the issues that drive returns. Today, the world’s leading retailers rely on Returnalyze to protect margin, strengthen product performance, and create frictionless customer experiences.