New leadership to take retail returns analytics software company to next level
Returnalyze, the retail industry’s leading AI-driven SaaS returns analytics company, has named veteran high-tech executive Rick Cramer as CEO. Cramer will leverage over 20 years of successful senior leadership experience to oversee all aspects of the company’s operations, with a focus on driving revenue growth of Returnalyze’s software as a service (SaaS) product offering and on taking the company to the next level of success and industry category dominance.
“Rick Cramer brings a wealth of expertise in building successful technology companies from the ground up,” said Scott Savitz, Founder and Managing Partner at Data Point Capital, lead investor at Returnalyze. “Rick has a proven track record of success in growing and scaling companies from $5M–$10M to well over $250M in annual recurring revenue.”
Throughout Cramer’s career, he has been instrumental in building several technology companies from early-stage to IPO with over $2B in market value. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President of Growth Products at Tricentis, through its acquisition of Neotys. He has also served in senior leadership positions at other highly successful venture-backed companies such as Signiant, Centra Software and Avid Technology.
“I could not be more excited about the opportunity at Returnalyze, and am looking forward to building upon the successful impact our solutions are making on our customers’ businesses, and, in turn, on our investors and partners,” said Cramer. “Returnalyze has enjoyed triple-digit revenue growth over each of the past three years since bringing its product to market. Most exciting to me, however, is a world-class team building best-in-class products that are being used by many of the world’s largest, forward-thinking retailers. And yet, we are clearly still in the early innings of what we are able to achieve and accomplish in the ‘returns’ category.”
Already Returnalyze works with many of the world’s largest retailers, such as J.Crew, Brooks Running, Wolverine and Perry Ellis, who depend on Returnalyze’s AI recommendations, best practices and industry benchmarking capabilities.
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According to Will Plourde, CTO of Returnalyze: “Returns are a huge cost for retailers—it’s common to see some retailers’ returns as high as 15-30% of sales—and Returnalyze leverages its purpose-built AI software to not only mitigate the financial and logistical impact of returns but also uncover hidden revenue opportunities.” As Plourde describes it, “With every return, customers are sending signals back to the retailer. Harnessing and analyzing the massive volume of those signals—insights about size and fit, products, brands, suppliers, webpages, stores and more—is actually a task perfectly suited for AI. The Returnalyze AI has been designed specifically for retail returns, and continuously analyzes tens of millions of data points. More importantly, the AI analysis doesn’t just tell you what’s going on and why, it tells you exactly what to do next. You get very crisp, data-driven prescriptive recommendations on where returns can be reduced.”
In a recent report from the National Retail Federation (NRF), returns totaled $743 billion in 2023, representing 14.5% of total sales. At this volume and scale, Cramer emphasized, “you really need AI to identify where the AI-recommended optimizations will have the biggest impact so that you can prioritize the actions. And Returnalyze does this from Day One.”
Concludes Plourde: “Our technology is allowing retailers to benefit from what otherwise has always been viewed simply as a major challenge. As a result, our customers are saving millions every year while providing a significantly better customer experience. And we couldn’t be more thrilled to have Rick Cramer, with his product, sales and management experience, to lead the team as we continue to help retailers succeed all over the world.”
