PITCHFOLD
The problem
Mid-size retailers track the refund and nothing else. Transport, inspection, repackaging, restocking and markdown sit in five different ledgers, so the true cost of a return is reconstructed once a year, by hand, after the fact.
Sample data — replace with your own research
Nobody owns the number
Finance sees refunds, operations sees pallets, neither sees a unit cost.
Decisions arrive late
By the time a product is flagged as a returns problem, the season is over.
The fix is manual
Teams rebuild the same spreadsheet every quarter and trust it less each time.
Why now
2025
Carriers opened their APIs
Leg-level cost data became readable without a custom integration for every lane.
2026
Disposal rules tightened
Writing stock off quietly stopped being the cheapest option in three of our markets.
Now
Margins are being audited
Buyers are asked to defend category margin monthly, and returns is the gap in the story.
Market, bottom-up
$0M
Annual spend on returns handling across our three launch markets
Built from the number of retailers above our size floor, their published return rates and the handling cost per unit we measured in pilots. The method is on the appendix slide; the figure is sample data, not a forecast.
Bottom-up build, 2026 — sample data
Product
Collect
Carrier, warehouse and POS events land in one event stream, keyed to the unit, not the order.
Price
Each handling step carries a rate, so a unit accrues its real cost as it moves.
Decide
Buyers see cost per SKU before the next order, and a rule can reroute or retire a line.
Replace with your own flow before sending this deck
How it works
Connect what already exists
Carrier API, WMS export and the POS refund feed. Two days, read-only.
Map the handling steps once
A short workshop turns the real process into priced steps the model can follow.
Watch a season
The ledger fills itself; the first category review happens in week six.
Act on it
Rules reroute, repair or retire a line, and the saving is attributed back to the rule.
Traction
0%
Average drop in handling cost per returned unit across four pilots
Four pilots, six months, sample data
Business model
| Line | Per account, year one | Cost to serve |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | 48,000 | 6,200 |
| Connector setup, one-off | 9,000 | 5,400 |
| Savings share | 21,500 | 1,800 |
| Contribution | 78,500 | 13,400 |
Sample data in US dollars — replace before sending
Where we sit
Team
R. Okonjo
Chief executive
Ran reverse logistics for a 900-store apparel group; rebuilt the returns ledger by hand twice.
S. Varga
Chief technology
Built event pipelines for a carrier network; shipped the first version of this model in a pilot.
M. Adeyemi
Operations
Fifteen years in warehouse process design across three markets.
Fictional team for this sample deck
The ask
$0
Seed round, 18 months of runway to twelve paying accounts
| Use of funds | Share | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering | 46% | 1,932,000 |
| Implementation and support | 24% | 1,008,000 |
| Go to market | 21% | 882,000 |
| Compliance and audit | 9% | 378,000 |
| Total | 100% | 4,200,000 |
Sample figures — replace with your round