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Each returned package carries more than goods. It represents a silent weight of intent and regret. Every return tells a story. Together, these stories reveal the architecture of modern retail.

In 2024, global apparel returns were at a rate of around 40%, equating to $890 billion in value and comprising nearly 17% of total retail sales. To illustrate, this exceeds the UAE’s projected 2025 GDP.

At this scale, returns effectively function as a major supplier of inventory flowing back into the business, yet the process of managing them has long been overlooked.

Businesses are now understanding that managing returns is just as important as managing sales. For example, a retailer turning over five billion dollars annually, with half of its sales online, could face a $750 million return problem when considering the industry average return rate of 30%.

While the UAE’s Net Zero 2050 and Circular Economy Policy encourage retailers to rethink everything from inventory management to product life cycles, the focus is now also shifting from how products are sold to how effectively they are recovered.

In essence, returns are no longer the cost of doing business. They are indicators, revealing inefficiencies, forecasting gaps, and opportunities that once went unseen.

Only 47% of returns are resold at full price; 42% are sold at a discount; and 12% never recirculate.
In short: lost margins, higher inventory costs, and greater environmental waste.

For Dubai’s luxury fashion districts, Abu Dhabi’s growing e-commerce hubs, and beyond, these numbers reveal untapped opportunities, as the impact of more innovative reverse logistics is reinforced by ongoing global progress.

Take returns kiosks, for example, which have processed 50-plus million items across the globe since 2020 to achieve retailer satisfaction rates that exceed 90%. This is just one of many solutions complementing the UAE’s smart city ambitions, as digital logistics networks and AI-driven inventory platforms are already restructuring the country’s supply chains while reducing costs, preserving brand equity, and aligning with consumer expectations for responsible retailing.

Still, one question remains.

How can we make returning something feel less like an ending and more like a beginning?

A recent survey saw 66% of global consumers saying stricter return policies deter them from buying anything at all.  In the UAE, where digital adoption is nearly 100%, shoppers expect speed, flexibility, and transparency at every touchpoint - including when returning an item.

The UAE Digital Economy Strategy 2031, which aims to double the digital economy’s contribution to GDP from 9.7% in 2022 to nearly 19.4% by 2031, is anchoring a national push for AI-driven logistics, e-commerce integration, and sustainable operations. This means innovation in reverse logistics is not only a business imperative, but a policy-aligned opportunity for brands seeking to lead in a low-carbon, high-efficiency future.

The technology enabling this shift may be overused nowadays, but it’s impossible to ignore: Artificial Intelligence.

AI is transforming post-purchases. Instead of treating a return as the end of a transaction, innovative systems now analyze why an item was returned, anticipate similar issues in future orders, and personalize recommendations to keep customers engaged. In other words, the return is a continuation of the customer-retailer relationship.

While AI refines the customer experience, its most significant impact lies in infrastructure.

And the future requires intelligent infrastructure.

AI isn’t just helping retailers understand why items come back; it’s also predicting, processing, and preventing returns before the next season’s stock lands on shelves. Through AI-enabled end-to-end supply chain solutions with specific returns management capabilities, retailers can achieve up to 55% greater planner efficiency, 40% fewer out-of-stocks, and 17% lower transport costs by improving forecasting and resource allocation.

Such progress supports government mandates, such as the UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031, which targets AI integration across transport, retail, and logistics. AI is not just automating returns; it’s transforming them into data loops to reveal what customers want, how products perform, and where supply chains can be both cleaner and faster.

It’s a future that speaks as much to the UAE’s digital ambitions as retail evolution itself.

In an economy where return on investment is what corporations prioritize, return on understanding is equally important. The lesson here isn’t that retail returns are a problem to fix, but rather a system to understand.

Every product that comes back is another data point helping retailers understand what is worth making, stocking, and shipping. While the UAE continues to be home to one of the world’s most digitally connected and convenience-driven consumer bases, every purchase will raise the benchmark for the next and instantly expose inefficiencies.

This reality now forces brands to treat each return not as lost revenue but as live intelligence.

—   Yahyah Pandor is the vice president and general manager for the MENAT region at Blue Yonder.