Most retailers treat product take-back as a cost. The numbers say it's one of the cheapest, highest-intent customer acquisition channels available — if you know how to use it.
Most retailers running a product take-back programme are thinking about it wrong.
They see it as a compliance cost. A logistics arrangement. Something the ESG team requested and the operations team has to manage. The customer hands in their old shoes, the box goes to the recycler, and that's the end of the story.
It isn't the end of the story. It's the beginning of one — and right now, most retailers are walking away from it.
When a customer walks in to hand over a pair of old running shoes, three things are true simultaneously.
And for most stores, this interaction ends with a "thanks, we'll take care of it" and a wave goodbye. No email. No data. No follow-up.
The average cost of capturing an email address in 2025 varies enormously by channel — and take-back sits at the very bottom of that cost curve.
That isn't a rounding error. That is a 4–8× difference in acquisition cost — for a subscriber who is arguably more valuable than one acquired through paid media, because this person has already told you exactly what they own, what category they shop, and where they are in the purchase cycle.
The real ROI case isn't just the cost of capture. It's what that email is worth once you have it — and what it comes attached to.
That repeat visit behaviour is the part most retail marketers don't anticipate. The incentive doesn't just convert the take-back into a subscriber — it creates a reason to return that has nothing to do with whether the customer is ready to buy yet. You're building foot traffic as a side effect of running a circular programme.
Let's put this together in terms a marketing budget meeting can understand. The assumptions below are conservative — a mid-sized sporting goods retailer, modest take-back volume, 75% email capture rate.
The good news is that this doesn't require a major technology overhaul. The basic requirements are straightforward.
An incentive that motivates action. A voucher, discount, or loyalty credit — something that makes the customer want to participate, provide their email, and return to redeem.
A capture mechanism at the point of take-back. Tablet, QR code, or staff-assisted — a simple digital flow that collects email and product data in one step.
A connection to your CRM. The email needs to flow into your marketing stack so it can be activated, segmented, and measured — not sit in a spreadsheet.
Product data fields. Brand, model, condition. This separates a take-back subscriber from a generic newsletter signup and enables real personalisation.
The stores already running this model — INTERSPORT, RunnersWorld, EK Sport — implemented it without disrupting existing operations. A programme can be live in as little as four weeks.
Every week your take-back programme runs without email capture, you're processing transactions and generating goodwill for customers you'll never be able to reach again.
You're paying for the logistics. Absorbing the staff time. Meeting your ESG obligations. But you're not building anything.
The same volume of take-backs, with a simple capture flow in place, would be building you a subscriber list, a product data asset, and a repeat-visit driver — simultaneously, at the lowest acquisition cost in your marketing mix.
The counter is already there. The customers are already coming. The only question is whether you're capturing the value they're bringing you.