Athleisure brand Vitality taps Loop for personalized, seamless returns process
Customer Service
A deep dive on how Vitality, an athleisure brand, crafted a personal returns experience while at the same time boosting efficiency and customer loyalty.
Photo: Generated by AI. Adobe Stock.
June 30, 2025 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com
Personalization within the retail customer experience isn’t just about making the shopping purchase experience personal. It’s about making every step of the consumer journey — from product discovery to browsing to checkout — a personalized experience.
Yet the product return experience, from the consumer’s view, typically isn’t a fun or personalized experience.
For the retailer, the return experience isn’t much fun either given the labor requirements, cost and additional inventory management are inherent in the process.
A less-than-stellar stellar return experience also impacts customer love — 99% of U.S. consumers agree retailers with flexible and extensive return policies care more about them as customers. It can also impact the bottom line as 57% of consumers will stop shopping with a retailer after just one bad return experience.
Given consumer response to poor return experiences one athleisure brand set out to deploy a personal returns experience while at the same time boosting efficiency and customer loyalty.
Who, what, why
Vitality describes itself as “more than just an athleisure brand” and as a “society of mutual support, where doers, the daring and dreamers can draw from — and give back to — the energy of a purposeful collective.”
Establishing a distinct mission is critical in the ultra-competitive industry. The global athleisure market is expected to record a positive CAGR of less than 8% during the forecast period (2022-2028) and reach approximately $ 450 billion by 2028.
To help stand out, Vitality focuses on three key elements to attract and retain customers, according to Audra Shipstad, operations and customer experience manager.
Those elements are:
- Leveraging customer touchpoints through on-site personalization and positive brand-building.
- Integrating sustainability into aspects of our product design, production and operations.
- Implementing forward-thinking post-purchase strategies, such as revenue retention through Loop’s solutions for facilitating exchanges.
But Vitality, founded in a Denver garage in 2018, was facing a big challenge given its time-intensive manual return process, Shipstad said in an email interview.
“We would manually accept returns from customers via email, issue a return label within our system, and send this back to the customer again via email,” said Shipstad. “Then, our returns team in the warehouse would have to manually track what was and was not returned.”
The brand determined, during the 2020 pandemic period, it was time to provide customers with a seamless, personalized returns experience that, at the same time, maximized margins and overall customer satisfaction.
“We recognize that our customers have many options when it comes to buying athletic apparel online, so we prioritize delivering a high-touch, high-quality experience at every stage of their journey. This very much includes the post-purchase stage of shopping,” said Shipstad.
Vitality researched several potential partners and chose Loop, a post-purchase platform that optimizes returns, exchanges and reverse logistics for more than 3,500 brands. The platform offers several features including Workflows, Instant Exchanges, Shop Now and Bonus Credit.
“We were looking to scale the company. But, more specifically, we needed a reliable partner that integrated seamlessly with the rest of our tech stack as we were a young brand at the time,” said Shipstad.
Loop also would provide the level of education and training needed for employees.
“We were very happy to find that Loop integrated seamlessly with our existing technology and onboarding employees to Loop’s processes was a breeze overall,” said Daly, adding deployment was “an easy fit and seamless onboarding process.”
That brand also wanted strategic direction from a partner that could share industry best practices and help the brand make better decisions as it scaled.
“Loop fulfilled this need on both counts,” said Shipstad. “The company proved to be far more forward-thinking and advanced than the other options we looked at; they’re always one step ahead of the current industry standard offering. Customer expectations are constantly shifting in retail and we need to ensure we can stay ahead of these ever-changing industry standards.”
Deep dive on Loop
Loop’s system is designed to streamline the returns process for both retailers and customers, according to Tara Daly, senior director of product marketing.
“Through our automated return processing functionality, retailers can eliminate the burden of manual returns processing, resulting in quicker return workflows, fewer errors and significantly decreased labor costs. By optimizing how brands process returns, they can redirect this time and savings into other areas of the business,” Daly said in an email interview.
The platform offers advanced data insights as well as an analytics tool to help identify return patterns, reveal the most common reasons for returns and evaluate patterns in individual shopper behavior to uncover suboptimal conduct like fraud and return policy abuse to support more informed decision-making.
“Understanding why customers are returning allows brands to quickly address product issues, such as fit, or listing descriptions, so they can address the driver of returns,” said Daly. “Knowing more specifics about each segment behavior enables brands to create customized experiences where they can reward their best customers while reducing their exposure to fraudulent ones, which translates into increased customer lifetime value and reduced loss.”
The platform integrates with Shopify, order management systems, key logistics and shipping partners and more, reducing the need for additional software and lowering costs. It also offers shipping to brands via Ship by Loop that lets brands configure return shipments within the Loop platform for both domestic and international returns. This provides access to a wide range of global carriers to compare rates and take advantage of Loop’s pre-discounted rates with more than 15 global carriers, securing up to 91% off standard carrier rates.
“Overall, a modern, streamlined return experience is no longer a nice to have in today’s retail environment, it’s a necessity to build trust, retain customers, and boost revenue,” said Daly. “Amid the proliferation of online sales and the narrowing of retail margins, returns are a crucial aspect of the shopping journey that can no longer be ignored.”
A robust ROI
Loop’s ROI benefits retailers as it improves a retailer’s customer experience given customization and optionality, said Daly.
The leading benefit is the platform’s ease of use and Loop’s user-friendly branded returns portal.
“This provides customers with a straightforward returns process that makes processing a return a simple and engaging process, where they can shop the entire website to find an exchange item with ease,” said Daly.
Automation drives speed and convenience and the flexible return options include store credit, exchanges, refunds and in-person return bars through Loop’s partnership with Happy Returns.
“There are also traditional mail-in return capabilities, and sustainable return options through improved consolidation, integrated resale channels, and easy-to-implement sustainable shipping strategies,” said Daly.
Customers are provided with real-time updates and tracking on return shipments through Order Tracking by Loop.
“Our consumer surveys have found that 57% of shoppers are willing to abandon a brand entirely if it provides a poor post-purchase experience. Because of this, we’re dedicated to continually improving the post-purchase experiences and capabilities we enable for brands. This ensures we, and our merchants, remain at the forefront of modern return experiences,” said Daly.
For Vitality, the ROI is clear in numbers. Since implementing Loop the brand has seen the following benefits:
- 10% return rate (below the apparel industry benchmark of 13%).
- 32% retained revenue via exchanges or store credit offers.
- 68% refund rate (below the apparel industry benchmark of 75%).
- More than 80% of returns go through in-person return bars, boosting sustainability and decreasing costs for Vitality.
“The first benefit we noticed with Loop was the ease of personalizing returns experiences and processes at scale for specific shoppers and items,” said Shipstad.
For example, during a sale event last year, Vitality used Loop Workflows to set up customized return rules for different product variants. Some items or bundles were marked as final sale, while others were not.
Instead of having customer support handle non-eligible return requests, Vitality swiftly implemented “if this, then that” scenarios to determine which returns could be processed based on each customer’s situation.
“Working with Loop also helped us enhance our brand’s sustainability, an important benefit to our customers. As a brand committed to sustainability, we incorporate recycled and reclaimed materials into some of our apparel,” said Shipstad.
With Loop’s Happy Returns integration, Vitality significantly reduced the environmental impact of returns.
“When customers use an in-person Return Bar, there’s no need for packaging — returns are consolidated and shipped back in bulk using reusable containers. This not only helps Vitality save money and lower our carbon footprint through bulk shipping, but it also eliminates packaging waste,” said Shipstad.
The process is extremely convenient for our customers as the Return Bar staff handle everything, even scanning the item on smartphones.
“The convenience is remarkable, removing any need for printers or manual, paper processes. This fully digital, streamlined experience ultimately aligns with modern customer expectations,” said Shipstad.
Another big CX benefit is the ability to reduce returns fraud and abuse.
Before partnering with Loop and utilizing the Happy Returns integration, Vitality would process refunds immediately upon request to ensure a positive customer experience.
“While the vast majority of our customers are trustworthy, the small percentage of fraudulent returns caused significant financial risk and logistical challenges over time. Now, with many customers using Return Bars — where items are inspected before refunds are issued — fraud has significantly decreased,” said Shipstad.
The brand, with Loop’s technology, has shifted from handling manual transactions to engaging in meaningful customer interactions.
“Holistically, Loop adds significant value to our brand and post-purchase experience by ensuring that customers enjoy a seamless experience while continuing to love the athletic wear they’ve come to trust,” said Shipstad.
About Judy Mottl
Judy Mottl is editor of Retail Customer Experience and Digital Signage Today. She has decades of experience as a reporter, writer and editor covering technology and business for top media including AOL, InformationWeek, InternetNews and Food Truck Operator.
