The New LTV Playbook: Turning Post-Purchase into Profit

The last five years in retail have seen a clear shift: from top-line growth at all costs to bottom-line accountability. In a session at CommerceNext, LoveShackFancy’s Stacey Warshaw and Extend’s Rohan Shah shared how brands are rewriting the rules of loyalty and profitability by focusing not on acquisition volume, but on what happens after checkout.

As Shah put it, one of the biggest post-COVID myths in retail was that any customer is a good customer. In reality, brands are only now waking up to how much unprofitable growth was hiding in plain sight through excessive returns, fraud, and poor post-purchase experiences.

That’s where Extend focuses its work: helping brands identify their most valuable customers not just those who spend, but those who return, re-engage, and don’t drain operational costs. It’s not about sales velocity. A customer who buys five items and returns all five isn’t worth the same as someone who buys one and keeps it.

The solution? Stop treating every buyer the same. High-value customers should get premium experiences faster returns, more flexibility, better support. Low-value or abusive behaviors should be met with more friction.

For LoveShackFancy, loyalty doesn’t mean points or discounts. It means brand love something Warshaw says the company sees across every generation, from tweens to grandmothers.

Warshaw joined the company in late 2023 after leading digital roles at brands like Ann Taylor and Club Monaco. One of her biggest takeaways since joining: LoveShackFancy inspires a kind of frenzy she’s never seen before. “It’s not about discounting,” she explained. “People are obsessed with the brand and want a piece of it.”

That brand fandom shows up in first purchase patterns. For example, the ruffle mini dress is one of their highest-LTV entry products. When a shopper starts there, the odds of retention go up dramatically.

The brand also sees loyalty across price points. Some customers only buy collab items, like the Stanley Cup capsule. Others invest in full-price apparel. Both matter but they’re not the same. Knowing the difference helps LoveShackFancy tailor experiences without falling into margin-eroding one-size-fits-all tactics.

Post-purchase policies are one of the most underused levers in retail LTV, according to Shah. Flat return windows, universal shipping fees, and rigid support flows fail to reflect the nuance of customer behavior.

LoveShackFancy uses Extend not just for shipping protection, but to begin building dynamic policies. Good customers who return a lot, but shop often, might get free return shipping. Serial abusers, on the other hand, are flagged and de-prioritized. It’s not punitive, it’s practical. The goal is to protect margins while still delighting loyal shoppers.

This approach also creates operational focus. As Warshaw noted, her team obsesses over return rate segmentation: separating collab SKUs (often final sale) from mainline items, analyzing fraud risk, and surfacing where genuine issues exist versus policy gaming.

Fraud came up repeatedly as both a hidden drain and a strategic blind spot. Shah detailed how Extend sees everything from fake tracking claims to reseller abuse. In some categories, bad actors cost brands up to 5% of their bottom line. The total value of fraudulent returns in the U.S. last year? Over $100 billion.

What’s more surprising is how easily it slips through the cracks. Customers who consistently “lose” packages. Returns that contain rocks instead of products. Dozens of claims filed with identical photos. These patterns aren’t easy to spot, unless you’re looking.

Shah’s team offers brands a fraud exposure assessment that parses purchase, return, and claims behavior to uncover hidden costs. LoveShackFancy has used this to better identify edge cases that previously flew under the radar.

Both speakers agreed: the future of profitable growth lies in smarter segmentation, better customer data, and more adaptable post-purchase operations. That doesn’t mean launching a loyalty program. It means designing systems that recognize context - who’s buying, how often, and what kind of experience they actually warrant.

Brands like LoveShackFancy are showing that brand love can scale but only if operations are aligned. From dress fit to package theft, the small moments matter. And with the right tools, they become sources of profit, not pain.

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