Carving their own path in the world of regenerative and sustainable fashion, DTC women’s clothing company, Christy Dawn, creates clothes that regenerate the environment — while harvesting deeply rooted customer connections along the way. 

“We’re a smaller brand creating a high-quality product that’s made in a special, regenerative way — so customers have high expectations in every interaction they have with us,” Sam Pick, Christy Dawn’s Director of Ecommerce, explains. “Whether that’s with our Customer Love team or in the digital experience we’re creating for our customers.”

Christy Dawn was one of many retailers affected by the sunsetting of Returnly by Affirm in 2023. Instead of going back to Loop — their returns provider before Returnly — Christy Dawn came to Narvar with a strict set of criteria in what they were looking for in this crucial part of the customer journey.

“We were seeking a solution to help us keep costs down in the returns process — while also using returns as a personalized point in the customer journey to turn a would-be return into a saved sale. Narvar checked all of those boxes and more for us.”‍

Sam Pick, Director of Ecommerce at Christy Dawn
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Their checklist in finding a return solution?

→  Find an affordable, cost-effective partner that doesn’t sacrifice on the customer experience
→  Power returns automation to lower operational expenditure and time spent on returns
→  Create bottom and top line growth by encouraging exchanges, offering instant credit, and further fostering customer relationships to keep them coming back

The Move to Narvar from Returnly

Like many high-growth DTC brands, Christy Dawn calls Shopify home for their ecommerce storefront. And they, like many others, turned to Narvar’s Return & Exchange App on Shopify to nail down their criteria. 

‍“We’d been experiencing higher return costs through Returnly…so it was a great opportunity to reset with a solution that could help offset our higher acquisition costs as well as power backend automation.”‍

Sam Pick, Director of Ecommerce at Christy Dawn

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With Returnly, Christy Dawn ran into monthly, unpredictable costs with commissions collected on every return. As a business striving for profitable, repeatable growth — they needed more predictability in their returns costs so they could continue to optimize for profits across the business. 

With Narvar, Christy Dawn is able to not only have a fixed cost solution, but more importantly an experience that doesn’t compromise on the customer-centric tenets Christy Dawn operates on. 

A Partnership Poised for Growth

While the partnership between Christy Dawn and Narvar is still in its infancy — Christy Dawn is already starting to see incremental changes that are promising for the future.

Customers are opting to exchange instead of return through Narvar’s Recommended Exchanges feature — personalized recommendations for products customers can opt for in lieu of an even exchange.

‍“The ability to drive exchanges and create recommendations for products our customers may like during a return really drew us to Narvar…that level of personalization is vital to us.”‍

Even better? Christy Dawn sees 10% of customers opting for instant shoppable gift cards instead of refunding to their original payment method — solidifying future purchases, revenue retention, and more importantly — carving the way for sustainable, long term loyalty.

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As to what’s next for Christy Dawn?

“We’re really excited to unlock even more potential with Narvar to automate our backend returns process — the operational cost savings there will be a win,” Sam explains in response to one of the things he’s looking most forward to in the Narvar partnership.

Best of all — Christy Dawn feels confident and ready for growth alongside their new partner: 

‍“The hands on support and attention to detail from the Narvar account team has been really great. From the initial sale to implementing with Narvar’s customer engineering team — the support has been incredible and a great change from what we had before. We’re excited for what’s next.”