The Circle of Shopping...

My boys just graduated from high school and my wife has been spending time trying to find clothes for them for the graduation and college. The kicker--they refuse to go to the store to try things on. So what do you do? Shop online.

She has spend literally thousands of dollars on purchases -- we have twin boys, so two of everything -- and, completing the circle of shopping, I have taken back literally thousands of dollars of clothes.

I am on a first-name basis with at least one clerk at a brick-and-mortar store because of my returns and the UPS guys know our house pretty well. Through out this entire experience (yes, we actually found a couple of "keepers") I have observed some things.

First, we shop at online retailers associated with brick-and-mortar stores in our area -- JC Penney, Macy's, Old Navy. This makes returning merchandise easier as they are a short drive from home. It seems much better than having to repackage things to return to online only retailers. Brick-and-mortar stores replaced by online only operations? I sure hope not. They should be augmented by online operations.

Returning things to these retailers was easy. The ease of this helps the retailer by making us more likely to use them again in the future. It can even help the physical store. On more than one occasion, I have picked up something else at the store while returning something from the online component.

Keep up the circle and retain the physical stores to make returns easier.