Frate (Acquired by Route)

Return fraud is surging, and it’s eating into margins, bloating ops teams, and quietly eroding trust between e-commerce brands and their customers. Frate (Acquired by Route) shares how to reduce return fraud without damaging customer experience. https://lnkd.in/gACgxMsq

I’m thrilled to announce that Frate Returns has been acquired by Route. Since founding Frate, our mission was simple: make returns better. And we did exactly that. In a short period of time, Frate became the returns platform trusted by industry-leading brands like Caraway Home, Monos, Honeylove, and Arezzo&Co, helping reduce return rates, eliminate refunds, and deliver better post-purchase experiences to millions of consumers. But “better” has evolved. Returns and exchanges are becoming a single piece of the post-purchase experience, and unifying what happens after checkout has never been more important for both merchants and consumers. I’ve been vocal about this in the past. The returns solution that creates outsized value in a traditionally margin-eroding process will be the one that is most focused and most innovative. That belief still holds. The most impactful post-purchase platform will be built on best-in-class, exchange-first returns, seamlessly woven into tracking and protection to create a consumer experience that keeps shoppers coming back. And there is no one in a better position to do this than Route. Route are the creators of the package protection space, have been trusted by over 13,000 brands globally, and have protected more than $20B in GMV and tracked over 1.4B orders. By joining forces, Frate’s leading returns and exchanges platform now operates within Route’s post-purchase platform, powering a delightful, unified experience for merchants and shoppers worldwide. I'm also happy to share that the entire Frate team has joined Route to continue to make returns better, now at truly global scale. Finally, thank you to everyone who believed in us. The Frate team, our investors, our partners, and especially the merchants who trusted us to rethink one of the hardest problems in ecommerce. You know the saying, and I mean it more than ever. We’re just getting started. Read the press release here: https://lnkd.in/dAJEcsSf

New Feature: Fully Custom Portal and Email Text Not to be dramatic (classic), but this one is a game-changer. Frate Returns partners can now customize every line of text within the portal AND emails. Before, brands would constantly ask to adjust text to better fit their brand voice. The only way they could do this was either through custom dev work from our team, or using their own ESP (ex. Klaviyo for emails). Now, our partners have free rein to make any changes they want, to both the portal and emails, in seconds. Lead by Anton Bavykin, supported by Kostya Alexeev and Yenn Lei. #returns #frate #shopify

Hire people that make you wonder how the business succeeded without them. For us, one (of many) is our Director of Support, Jim Cavill. As founders, it’s hard to “give away your legos”, meaning you hand over responsibilities to someone else for something you deem as critical. Before Jim ran support it was Jake, before Jake it was myself. So Jim is the only person to run support at Frate Returns that isn’t a co-founder. That just goes to show we take support very seriously, as we owe it to our partners to uphold any promises and do right by their own customers. Yet Jim is the closest thing to a superhero that I’ve ever worked with. He: - Is the first POC for any support-related questions (with a <8 min response time) - Has onboarded countless brands (this was not in the JD…) - Launched a knowledge base that is now over 50 articles - Is constantly bringing positive energy day-in and day-out, while doing what is known as a pretty gruelling job Without fail, every merchant we work with raves about how great Jim is. And we're very grateful to have him for the past year. Jim...we're glad we gave you our legos. *Here's a perfect depiction of Jim and his role at Frate (on right): holding the team together, with a smile on his face, throughout chaos 😅

Are you a brand or 3PL? What are you doing on Wednesday? You should join our Two Boxes Live webinar to hear from Bailey N. from Frate Returns and Emily Olivieri from Nisolo about why returns operations deserve to be prioritized for your holiday planning. The best brands and 3PLs are turning returns from a nuisance into a source of high quality inventory, intelligence, and revenue for everyone involved. Link to join is in comments.