The frenzy of peak season has passed, but its effects linger. For many organizations, the weeks following the holiday rush expose deeper inventory blind spots: returns pile up, inventory vanishes into processing limbo, and the hard reality that customer promises made under duress often slip through the cracks. Why does this cycle repeat, and what is really fueling these blind spots?
To move beyond conjecture, we interviewed more than 215 supply chain executives from North America and Europe, excavating data and real-world experiences from across the industry. The findings reveal a collective truth: regardless of sector, the invisible inventory crisis and the returns black hole remain among the thorniest challenges in post-peak recovery.
Inventory Blind Spots Inside the Network
Imagine a network full of inventory, and yet your systems cannot mobilize it when it is needed most. Sound familiar? Almost a quarter of the leaders we interviewed (23%) admit they cannot access inventory that physically exists in their network. An even larger share (28%) needed to cancel orders despite stock being available somewhere in their system. Now layer this on top of the scale of order volumes you get at peak, and the pain points become loud and clear:
Lost sales and false stockouts: When your systems are disconnected and data is fragmented, you lose real-time visibility to your inventory position. The solution may list an item as newly returned, just put away, or in transit, but shows “out of stock” online. When your system is unable to make order promises confidently, it impacts sales and consumer trust.
Trapped working capital: Inventory residing in returns channels, unallocated sites, or “stuck” in buffering becomes a sunk cost rather than an asset. The system holds safety stock hostage, even as one node suffers markdowns and another runs empty (an outcome reported by 39% of organizations surveyed).
Network-wide blind spots: While a remarkable 88% of surveyed executives report robust visibility in their own DCs, that clarity dissolves across partner sites, field operations, and third parties. When systems do not speak the same language or update in real time, the result is conflicting signals. One platform shows the stock as received; another shows it as in transit. A return is scanned but is not yet sellable. Instead of a single, trusted view, teams must reconcile delayed feeds and manual reports. That is how data fragmentation turns abundant information into operational confusion, and why products that physically exist still behave as if they do not.
The consequences are staggering: according to the NRF, returns alone have cost organizations over $75 billion in 2025. Real progress starts with tearing down these silos. The leaders in our study converge around a unified, real-time inventory model, bringing every node, from store, returned goods, warehouse, partners, to 3PLs, into a single source of truth. That level of synchronization does not just enable precision in order sourcing and fulfilment, it transforms “invisible” assets into available, value-driving stock.
The returns black hole
Returns are no longer just a retail story. They are headline news for distributors, logistics providers, and wholesalers alike. Across the 215+ executives we surveyed, returns emerged as the most unpredictable and costly pool of inventory. Some sectors are now seeing return rates stubbornly above 16%, transforming the “reverse channel” into an operational minefield. The research underscores this: 57% have between 5% and 15% of their inventory value, often $8 million to $25 million for a $1 billion network, locked in returns processing at any time.
Why does so much value fall through the cracks?
Capital tied up in limbo: Without intelligent, responsive systems, organizations inadvertently re-order goods they already own but cannot locate or redeploy. The working capital impact is enormous.
Forced markdowns vs. full-price recovery: When decisioning depends on batch rules or delayed data feeds, returned stock misses windows for full-price resale or redeployment. In fact, 56% of organizations told us they cannot resell eligible returns daily or even weekly, as opportunity dwindles even further for seasonal goods and/or fashion houses with fast-moving cycles.
Disconnected systems and feedback loops: With returns handled in the periphery, the rest of the supply chain operates blindly. The operational feedback needed for smarter, more lucrative resale and recovery is out of sync or absent.
The lesson: Integrating returns into the execution network, similar to OMS, WMS, and TMS in real-time, is indispensable. The most advanced supply chains are leveraging AI-driven Smart Disposition. Smart Disposition utilizes intelligent, real-time decisioning to route every return to its most valuable next destination, be it a demand hotspot, a wholesale partner, or express redeployment to fill a spike downstream. This approach turns a cost center into a fast recovery engine, ensuring those billions of peak-season API calls yield results all year.
Why it matters now
What is striking is not just the frequency of these blind spots, but how deeply various sectors have embedded them. Every API call, every promise made to a customer or partner, and every returned item piling up in the warehouse reflects the health and dysfunction of the underlying inventory network. Our research revealed that nearly 38% of organizations consider promise failures urgent, proof that trust can break down long before the truck leaves the dock.
The post-peak period is your rarest opportunity to rethink everything before the next surge exposes the same structural flaws. Instead of firefighting one false stockout, one late return, or one missed promise at a time, now is the moment to break the cycle. The organizations winning in this landscape are not waiting for another peak crisis. They are asking challenging questions and acting with urgency:
Do we have a real-time, unified view of every unit across all channels and partners?
Are you getting more returned items sold at full price, or is your largest inventory pool still sitting in a black hole?
Are your returns routed to drive maximum recovery, or simply flowing to the nearest or standard facility by default?
Does your technology adapt dynamically as demand, conditions, and customer expectations shift, even at the height of peak season traffic?
If these questions unsettle you, you are not alone, and you are not stuck. Treat your returns as your largest inventory asset to manage, not just a cost center. Turn invisible inventory into working capital, because building the foundation for staying peak-ready relies on agility, real-time data, and intelligent order orchestration. Starting now.
You can download the full report here: Real-time retail: The new operating model for inventory intelligence.
Author:
Hiu Wai Loh, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Commerce
Hiu Wai Loh is a Product Marketing Leader supporting the growth and market positioning of the growing Order Management and Returns portfolio within Blue Yonder. She plays a strategic role across go-to-market planning, analyst relations, commercial strategy, and global sales enablement, helping align product innovation with measurable business value. She works closely with global retailers, distributors, and logistics providers as they adapt to the increasing speed and complexity of modern agentic commerce. Her work focuses on translating real-world supply chain challenges into practical, data-driven operating models that improve working capital efficiency and customer trust.
She is particularly interested in building and scaling new product categories from zero to one and how real-time orchestration and AI are reshaping the future of digital commerce.
Based in London, she enjoys water sports and time outdoors.
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