The world’s biggest ocean shipping group A.P. Moller – Maersk is investing in award-winning return logistics software business, ZigZag Global, through Maersk Growth, its corporate venture arm.
The investment will further accelerate the rollout of the solution to retailers of all sizes and expand strategic development opportunities, the British technology company said.
The ZigZag platform connects retailers to a global network of 220 warehouses and more than 200 carrier services in over 130 countries – all from a single integration. ZigZag uses predictive analytics to understand the most cost-effective and energy-efficient route to work out if a retailer should hold and resell returned products in local markets or bring them back via consolidation.
Al Gerrie, Founder of ZigZag, said: “We are delighted to welcome Maersk on board as an investor and strategic partner, as we continue our mission to provide a market leading returns solution. In addition to allowing us to reach more customers whilst remaining carrier agnostic, the funding and Maersk’s extensive reach and expertise will allow us to further develop our product offering to deliver even more value for retailers throughout the supply chain.”
Oliver Finch, Investor at Maersk Growth, said: “We are excited to support ZigZag’s ongoing growth. Returns are a huge, costly and often under-managed component of the e-commerce experience. ZigZag helps retailers to reduce the cost and complexity of managing returns with its leading-edge software and functionality.
“ZigZag’s solution provides granular visibility of returns and drives seamless coordination of service providers. This dramatically simplifies the complex process of returns from the business and consumer perspective. Retailers and customers alike benefit from these improvements and efficiency gains – via increased speed and quality of return logistics, broader customer engagement and care options, and a clear reduction in the costs and waste associated with retail returns.”
ZigZag’s innovative SaaS platform addresses meaningful customer pain points within return logistics. Retail consumers continue to “over-order” and increasingly view generous returns policies as a core part of retail convention.
As a result, returns have increasingly become part of the “new normal” for e-commerce and multi-channel retailers and return logistics continue to drive significant cost, complexity and waste in the retail supply chain. In some retail segments returns are reaching up to 50% of total sales and with the predicted annual e-commerce growth of over 20%, according to some industry analysts, online and multichannel retailers need to find more innovative and sustainable solutions.
Existing customer performance studies demonstrate that ZigZag’s platform can reduce costs and waste associated with retail returns by up to 57%. The company can also meaningfully reduce the environmental impact of returns and contribute to corporate sustainability goals. Enhanced visibility and data capture can identify opportunities to manage returns within country of sale. In some cases, this has reduced parcel journey lengths by up to 65%. At scale, this results in measurable reduction in waste and carbon footprint in the existing retail supply chain.
Moreover, ZigZag’s solution is well aligned with Maersk’s vision of enabling more sustainable global supply chains, and consistent with Maersk’s wider ambitions to become the end-to-end container logistics provider.
