How PELAGIC GEAR uses AfterShip Returns to keep customers hooked

For the love of the ocean

For nearly 20 years, PELAGIC GEAR has been combining technical fishing with casual lifestyle wear, creating high-quality apparel, eyewear, and accessories.

Headquartered out of the United States, the brand has quickly become essential to fishing and ocean culture. With international shipping to roughly 60 countries across the globe, they have a worldwide reach.

When it comes to performance, comfort, and style – PELAGIC GEAR is in a league of its own, and they’ve scaled to a place where customers expect the same performance throughout the customer journey—including the returns process.

A returns experience that left people reeling

PELAGIC GEAR was looking for ways to reduce customer contact across all channels, especially in their returns department. They found that their previous solution felt less focused on returns as it developed. Due to lagging innovations, PELAGIC GEAR lacked a lot of functionality with their previous solution, requiring more manual processes such as pulling information from the carriers.

Limited by a tight budget and development resources, they needed a solution that could scale with their business. They spent hours trying to manage all their returns and reconciling their finances. It was a manual and expensive process.

"Shipping is one of our biggest expenses," noted PELAGIC GEAR's Senior Director of eCommerce. "Sometimes, when we have to create a new return label for discounted or low-priced items, we might be spending more money to get an item back."

Catching more, releasing less

Since switching to AfterShip Returns, PELAGIC GEAR has seen improvements in two major areas.

• 12% decrease in return contact tickets
  
  With AfterShip Returns, customers can initiate the return on their own. The solution saves the customer time and eliminates needing to contact PELAGIC GEAR’s customer service team. PELAGIC GEAR no longer has to deal with issues such as finding and creating labels for customers. Ultimately, the brand decreased its support tickets significantly.

• 18% lift in purchases driven from the return portal
  
  AfterShip Returns allows PELAGIC to customize the return portal. They unlocked the ability to showcase new products or drive customers back to purchase other items while the customer is on the return page. Their content can be effortlessly updated as they scale and grow.

They’ve also used the solution to create a more branded look and feel for their return portal. Customers can experience a more consistent buyer journey and PELAGIC GEAR brand.

AfterShip Returns’ intuitive features were the lure

When looking for a solution, PELAGIC had a few non-negotiables on their list:

• A robust solution that could support their customer service team and remain in use long-term.

• A solution with easy implementation and maintenance without complex development or downtimes.

“We wanted our new solution to be innovative,” continued PELAGIC GEAR’s Senior Director of eCommerce. “We needed to see a roadmap that would address our business needs. AfterShip Returns not only delivered but was more developed than the competitors. We’ve had no customer complaints.”

Built with Shopify in mind, PELAGIC GEAR could use AfterShip Returns to integrate seamlessly with its existing system. There was also a clear opportunity to sign-on AfterShip Tracking to unify its post-purchase experience.

AfterShip Returns helps PELAGIC GEAR keep customer expectations from floundering

PELAGIC GEAR has been taking advantage of the 'Top Returns by Variant' feature to help them quickly identify problematic products. The report enables visibility into the highest returned items and quickly takes action. They can investigate quality issues or promote other products as alternatives.

PELAGIC GEAR was also able to save on shipping costs.

"Putting restrictions on specific items means we don't need to jump through hoops. We can identify our products through tags and fully control our returns, especially from a cost perspective," continued the Senior Director of eCommerce.

Moreover, the seamless integration with Shopify Plus meant that implementation was easy, and AfterShip Returns was ready to use immediately. "We didn't need to customize a lot, and the return on investment and value is so high," said the Senior Director. "AfterShip Returns stood apart from other return systems."