Want Your Online Returns Picked Up From Your House? This Company Is Already Making It Happen In 40 U.S. Cities. Optoro helps giant retailers like Ikea and Best Buy manage online returns. Now, CEO Amena Ali is rolling out their at-home pickup service.

Selling things online is simple. Handling the returns is not. But with veteran software executive Amena Ali at the helm, Optoro is helping some of the biggest retailers — like Ikea, Gap, American Eagle, and Best Buy — create a seamless returns process.

The software-as-a-service company broke through in 2020 with its signature "express return" feature, which lets customers drop off unboxed items at stores like Staples, and has since been rolled out in over 1,000 stores. Optoro has continued to customize the returns experience, and in the summer of 2023, the company launched an at-home pickup service, which is now available in 40 cities.

"The idea of utilizing technology to promote circularity and create a more sustainable retail industry resonated deeply with me," Ali says. "We're not just making returns less of a hassle; we're transforming them into a strategic asset for retailers, reimagining the reverse logistics supply chain and more broadly, making it a force for good for the planet."

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In the past year, the company has seen a 35% increase in units processed year over year and a 40% increase in Express Returns volume, and there's been a significant bump in the number of brands using Optoro's portal. All of this made Ali a finalist on our Entrepreneur of 2024 list of 20 innovative leaders.

Keeping customers happy with returns processes while reducing the cost of returns for retailers is complex. How does Optoro help its customers keep their customers loyal?

A one size fits all approach really is not the right solution, because you're either too lenient or too stringent in whatever your policies are. The kinds of things that we bring to the picture help retailers sort of intelligently and thoughtfully manage returns. That starts with what the shape of the returns portal is, and what options are given in the portal. So for instance, if Rachel is a trusted shopper, a loyal customer of mine, I want to make it as easy as possible for Rachel to buy product A, and if it isn't right, exchange it for product B without waiting. We are bringing data science and modeling to say Rachel is a trusted customer, and let's actually offer to immediately ship Rachel item B, even before Rachel's returned item A, because that's the kind of trust and engagement we have with Rachel. Whereas Shanna, maybe she's a new customer. I don't know what her profile is like, and I might not choose to be as lenient with her, maybe that's more of a standard exchange.

Have you led Optoro to focus on data and AI more in your time since you've become CEO?

Categorically. It's always been something the company has made a strong suit. I would say that what we've done now is really increased our partner strategies, such that we have partners who do the logistics, the actual movement of goods from point A to point B, and we have partners who do the processing. So we have software that helps with the receiving, with the dispositioning. Dispositioning, meaning, what do I do with this, is it worth repair? And if so, then what channel? Do I send it to a discounter, do I send it to liquidation? Things of that nature. I would say that we've always had that thread at Optoro, but we really doubled down on it, because that is the future, and that is, candidly, the best way to figure out what's the right solution for the shopper and the retailer and the planet.

Were there any developments or changes you were most excited about rolling out at Optoro?

Because returns are such an afterthought for a lot of brands and retailers, they've said, "Hey, Optoro, we can't figure out [what to do with our returns.] This is too complicated, but there's too much money in there. Can you just handle it for us?" We used to do the processing, not because we were always dying to do the processing, but because there were no other options. I'm really pleased that we've now established partnerships with what are called 3PLS, or third party logistics players, such that our software can work with their labor management, their warehouses, and the warehouse management capabilities to offer a solution. I'm pretty proud of that change that we made, and we've also invested more from a data science and modeling perspective in terms of figuring out, how do you have the predictive analytics that really helps you figure out what's the right solution to a right set of customers, that's right for the customer and right for the retailer.

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There's been a lot of revenue growth in the time that you came on board. What do you think has been key to driving that?

Three things — it's really customers, product, and it's partners. The beautiful thing that happened was we launched our whole returns portal and our Express Returns capability and that launched with a number of huge national customers and then we partnered with a few folks to enable that. That being said, we're focused not just on growth but on profitability, which really comes from us focusing on software and how software, like with Locus Robotics or new partnerships.

Are there any other highlights from 2024 you're particularly proud of?

More generally, this is really the era of data and personalization and so some of the partnerships we're now looking at are other data companies and how we can enable greater intelligence and that kind of personalization. That could be suggesting a drop off point close to you, it could be tailoring a returns policy, it could be spotting abuse and fraud to handle that separately. So I'm really excited about our ability to do that.