How AX Paris turned returns into retained revenue

AX Paris is a women’s fashion brand with over 25 years on the high street, built on a clear mission: bring the latest in celebrity and runway fashion to women everywhere without compromising on style, quality, or price. From occasion-ready dresses to everyday essentials, the brand serves a broad audience of women aged 20 to 50 across the UK and internationally.

With a strong DTC operation, significant order volumes, and a customer base that shops frequently across multiple platforms, managing returns at scale is not a nice to have—it is a core operational challenge. Before Swap, that challenge was winning.

The challenge

Multiple systems, zero visibility. A constant drain on the team.

Before Swap, AX Paris’s returns operation was a patchwork of manual processes. The ops team was spread across multiple systems, coordinating refunds across different payment methods and fielding a constant stream of customer queries about return statuses. There was no single source of truth, and no easy way for the team or their customers to get clarity quickly.

The most frustrating part, as Jason described it, was the lack of visibility and control. Delays cascaded — customers were left waiting, the ops team was pulled away from strategic work to handle repetitive manual tasks, and there was no clear way to reduce the burden without adding headcount.

• Multiple disconnected systems: The ops team juggled separate tools for refunds, payment processing, and return tracking — with no single view of what was happening or where.
• No visibility for customers or the team: Without clear status updates, customer queries about returns piled up, creating a support burden that grew in line with order volumes.
• Manual coordination across payment methods: Processing refunds across different payment methods required individual attention for each case — time-consuming and error-prone at scale.
• No structured exchange pathway: Without a returns platform, funnelling customers towards exchanges over refunds was practically impossible — refunds were the default, and revenue left with them.

The Solution

Embedded within weeks. Transformative from day one.

Swap became part of AX Paris’s daily workflow surprisingly quickly — within the first couple of weeks. The turning point came when the team noticed that support tickets related to returns had dropped significantly. That single signal made clear that Swap wasn’t just improving back-office efficiency: it was visibly improving the customer experience at the same time.

AX Paris use Swap across multiple platforms — enabling a consistent, unified returns experience regardless of where the customer originally purchased. The platform replaced the fragmented multi-system process with a single, automated flow covering refunds, exchanges, and gift cards, while the account management team worked proactively alongside the AX Paris team to continuously push returns performance down through new ideas and innovations.

1. A unified returns portal across multiple platforms

   Swap gave AX Paris one consistent returns experience across all their sales channels — eliminating the patchwork of tools and giving the team and their customers a single, clear process to follow.
2. Automated refund processing — across all payment methods

   The manual coordination of refunds across different payment methods was removed entirely. Swap handles it automatically, freeing the ops and customer service teams to focus on work that requires their expertise.
3. Real-time return status visibility for customers

   Customers can now track their returns in real time through the portal — dramatically reducing inbound queries and resolving the biggest source of customer frustration before it reaches the support team.
4. Exchanges and gift cards as first-class options

   By making exchanges and gift cards as easy to choose as a refund, Swap created the conditions for over £1 million in exchange revenue and £2.4 million in gift card and store credit retention — both figures that simply didn’t exist before.
5. Proactive account management and continuous optimisation

   Swap’s account team has worked alongside AX Paris as a genuine partner — bringing new ideas and innovations that have continuously pushed return rates down and improved profitability, not just at launch but over time.

The Results

£3.4 million retained. Every month, without fail.

• Across 2024 and 2025, AX Paris retained over £3.4 million in revenue through Swap Returns — revenue that would have left the business as refunds under the previous process.
• More than £1 million generated through exchanges — customers who would otherwise have simply returned, now choosing to stay and shop.
• Over £2.4 million retained through gift card and store credit outcomes — keeping spend inside the AX Paris ecosystem rather than walking out the door.
• AX Paris recovers between £95k and £330k every single month through Swap outcomes — demonstrating not a one-off gain, but a structural change in how returns performance is managed.

The £3.4 million total is striking, but the monthly consistency is what tells the real story. Between £95k and £330k recovered every month means Swap is not a launch-day win — it is a permanent fixture in AX Paris’s revenue model. The breakdown matters too: £1 million in exchange revenue and £2.4 million in gift cards reflect a fundamental shift in customer behaviour. When the returns experience is seamless and alternatives are presented clearly, customers choose to stay.

Internally, the transformation has been equally significant. Processes that once required constant manual attention now run automatically. The ops team has reclaimed time for strategic work. Customer support tickets about returns have fallen sharply. And through continuous collaboration with Swap’s account management team, the improvements have compounded over time — each optimisation building on the last.