Returns Peaks Are Growing as Warehouses Lose Their Post-Christmas Breathing Space
The days between Christmas and New Year can serve as an unofficial part of a warehouse’s capacity plan. When incoming returns slow, teams have an opportunity to clear inspection queues, recover storage space and prepare for January. If that pause becomes shorter, the operation loses more than a quiet week. It loses the recovery period that allows an overstretched process to enter the next peak without carrying the previous one’s unfinished work.
New analysis supplied by ReBound Returns suggests that this recovery window is narrowing while peak returns volumes are increasing. Separately, The Stevens Company, a distributor of medical and laboratory supplies, describes how faster picking can extend the time available to complete orders before delivery vehicles leave. The businesses serve different markets, but their responses expose a shared operational question: does additional processing speed help goods complete their next movement, or does it move the queue somewhere else?
The Seasonal Pause Is Becoming Less Reliable
According to ReBound’s analysis, its early December returns peak in 2025 was around 23% higher than the equivalent point in 2024. The January 2026 spike was approximately 24% higher than January 2025. These are figures from the company’s analysis, rather than a measure of the entire retail market. The material supplied does not specify the sample size or whether changes in its customer base affected the comparisons.
Liselotte Reijrink, Sales Director at ReBound Returns, said the changing pattern could leave warehouse teams with less opportunity to recover. Her assessment connects the timing of incoming returns with the work needed to make each item available for its next destination. A return arriving at the building still needs assessment and a processing decision. Reijrink explained:
“Returns activity is also starting to climb during Black Friday week itself, as shoppers increasingly send back purchases almost as soon as they arrive. Volumes build, with the second week of December consistently the busiest week of the year for returns. The shrinking post-Christmas returns dip, combined with the year-on-year growth in peak volumes points to a more sustained period of activity across the returns supply chain.
“This puts more pressure on warehouse teams. Returned goods need to be received, assessed, and processed before they can be resold. If volumes stay elevated for longer, backlogs could build up, and stock could take longer to reach its final destination, whether that is back to shelves or re-routed for recycling, repair, or donation.”
The implication is that a returns plan needs to account for accumulated work as well as the busiest arrival day. An operation may absorb a short surge by allowing processing queues to grow, provided a quieter period follows. Sustained arrivals make that approach harder to maintain. Capacity planning therefore needs to distinguish goods awaiting inspection, goods ready for resale and goods requiring another route, because each occupies space without progressing at the same rate.
Faster Picking Has to Reach the Departure Window
At The Stevens Company’s expanded Winnipeg distribution facility, the operational boundary is the delivery schedule. John Lowerison, Vice President of Operations, said product size and picking velocity determine which supplies belong in AutoStore rather than conventional storage. His response concerns healthcare distribution, not retail returns. It nevertheless shows how the value of faster warehouse processing depends on the next scheduled movement.
“In an ideal world, we would have every product in AutoStore because of its efficiency, but the two deciding factors are product size and velocity. We want items that are picked frequently and ordered by many customers, rather than slower-moving or one-off items. Traceability requirements don’t differ between conventional storage and AutoStore. The advantage of AutoStore is that it presents bins on a first-in, first-out or first-expiry, first-out basis, so no one can pick from a newer lot by mistake.”
“Our main limiting factor is still when the trucks leave the door. AutoStore shortens our picking time, which lets us keep picking later in the day, closer to our order cut-offs. That means more orders will ship the same day they’re placed, with fewer left behind for the next route.”
Count the Goods That Complete the Process
Accurate stock records remain essential when goods move between processing stages. In earlier Supply Chainer coverage, Luis Rodriguez, Senior Vice President of Operations at Source Logistics, warned: “Small put-away and pallet-move errors rarely stand out on their own”. His comments concerned warehouse inventory accuracy, a separate issue that becomes consequential when teams need to identify which stock is physically ready for fulfilment.
Taken together, the responses suggest a more useful capacity test than processing speed alone: how much work reaches its next required destination on time? For returns, that means measuring the interval from receipt to an actionable disposition and onward movement. For outbound healthcare orders, it means completing the pick before the vehicle departs. When recovery periods shrink, unfinished work becomes tomorrow’s starting position, making the age and location of each queue as important as the number of items handled today.
