After defining your goals and identifying capability gaps, the next step in launching a recommerce operation is decision-making. Instead of going all-in from the start, retailers should adopt a stage-gate approach — launching in small, controlled pilots before scaling.
1. Start with a closed-loop proof of concept
Rather than changing your entire retail operation, begin with a single test environment — one store, one product category, or a standalone subdomain like resales.retailer.com.
- This allows you to collect data and feedback without disrupting your main store or online experience.
- You can assign one employee to act as a champion, testing processes, workflows, and customer interactions before expanding further.
2. Define clear success criteria
Each stage should have measurable goals — for example, increasing revenue recovery from product returns, improving sustainability outcomes, or boosting customer loyalty.
- Run the pilot for 2–6 months and review results.
- Based on data, decide whether to continue, adjust, or stop the initiative.
3. Scale through standardization and automation
As you move to the next stages, centralizing operations can help. For example, a dedicated warehouse for inspection and refurbishment simplifies scaling. Tuomo summarizes the scaling process as:
Standardize → Automate → Delegate → Elevate
- Standardize processes to make them repeatable.
- Automate where possible using software.
- Delegate responsibilities across your team.
- Elevate by expanding categories, locations, and efficiency.
4. Build for flexibility
Avoid systems that only support one vertical or model. Instead, use horizontal capabilities — such as individualized inventory tracking, catalog management, and multi-channel integrations — so you can sell each item multiple times through different recommerce models.
This structured, data-driven approach helps retailers test ideas safely, minimize risk, and scale recommerce operations with confidence.
Karri: So now we have capabilities, we have some kind of a goal in mind and now we know the gaps that we want to fill to actually achieve that goal and then it's probably time to make some decision based on these.
Tuomo: Yeah so for decision-making I would champion a kind of a stage-gate model meaning that you don't try to make a long-term decision immediately but rather you package your decision-making into phases and stages and then you have some gates where you've defined success criteria for those gates to say that whether we go forward with this setup, whether we adjust or whether we kill the initiative totally.
Tuomo: Usually what I've seen to be the most actionable way forward that gets results and data the fastest — which often means it has the highest likelihood of success — compared to some long projects with a lot of work hidden for months or years before launch, the best model is where you have a closed-loop proof-of-concept launch. So if you're a multi-store retailer, or even a few stores, you select just one to start with and you map your capabilities and processes around that.
Tuomo: It might in some cases be just the fact that there's one employee that can champion this whole process and act as the proto person — the one you want to model your scaling after. In one store location it's easier to introduce a new system, test new processes, and run everything else as-is. It can be a physical store or an online test — for instance, a standalone subdomain like resales.retailer.com that’s separated from your main store.
Tuomo: The idea is that you fully separate this purchasing experience so you can look at analytics independently, while your main operation continues without too much noise. Then you define what success looks like. Maybe you launched this initiative to recover more revenue from product returns, to improve sustainability, or to build brand loyalty. You set the success metrics, run the test for a few months, and then decide whether to scale.
Karri: I know that Twice, for example, has some customers that are doing like a centralized operation for refurbishment and handling reverse logistics. So one person can learn a lot and instead of scaling store by store, they can centralize these operations, which helps scaling faster if it’s successful.
Tuomo: Definitely. If you're able to centralize logistics and physical operations in one place, it helps a lot. You can dedicate a warehouse for inspection and refurbishment, which makes scaling easier.
Tuomo: There's an employee at our company who used to say that the process of scaling is about standardizing, automating, delegating, and elevating. These champions leading the initiatives first analyze, then run pilots, and continuously figure out what to standardize, what to automate — usually through software — and then delegate as they bring in more people.
Tuomo: Finally comes elevation — when you’ve standardized and automated enough that you can delegate processes to others and focus on supporting teams, expanding product categories, or scaling to more locations.