Holiday returns: What IT and business teams must prepare for

Holiday returns now rival major sales events in scale and operational impact. January is effectively a second peak season, driven not by purchases but by the wave of returns that follows the holidays. Many gifts aren’t opened until late December or early January, so issues like sizing mismatches, duplicate gifts and unwanted items surface at the same time.
The  National Retail Federation projects that  17% of all holiday sales will be returned in 2025 , meaning retailers must treat December through February as a defined “returns season” with its own demand curve and system expectations. For IT and operations leaders, this creates sustained pressure across the entire stack: return portals, identity checks, OMS and WMS integrations, refund engines, and carrier-tracking workflows.