{"id":5342,"date":"2026-04-06T11:00:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/?p=5342"},"modified":"2026-04-06T11:10:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T11:10:04","slug":"sustainability-in-your-ear-don-carli-on-tuning-what-we-see-online-to-reduce-ecommerce-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/06\/sustainability-in-your-ear-don-carli-on-tuning-what-we-see-online-to-reduce-ecommerce-returns\/","title":{"rendered":"Sustainability In Your Ear: Don Carli On Tuning What We See Online To Reduce eCommerce Returns"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"><a href=\"https:\/\/whattheythink.com\/articles\/129325-the-850-billion-retail-return-problem-nobody-owns-yet\/\">$850 billion<\/a>. That\u2019s what retail and e-commerce returns will cost in 2026, generating 8.4 billion pounds of landfill waste \u2014 and a surprising share of it involves products that worked perfectly. They just didn\u2019t look the way people expected. About 22% of consumers return items because the product looked different in person than it did online, and for home goods and textiles, that number climbs higher. The culprit has a name: metamerism \u2014 the way colors shift under different light sources, so the navy sectional and the matching throw pillow that looked identical on your screen clash under your living room LEDs. <a href=\"https:\/\/whattheythink.com\/articles\/author\/222\/\">Don Carli<\/a>, founder of Nima Hunter and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Communication, joins <em>Sustainability In Your Ear<\/em> to explain why this keeps happening and what it would take to stop it.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_366262\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-366262\" style=\"width: 512px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Don-Carli-3.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-366262 size-full lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"512\" data-src=\"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Don-Carli-3.jpg\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-366262\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Don Carli, founder of Nima Hunter Inc. and columnist for WhatTheyThink.com, is our guest on <i>Sustainability In Your Ear<\/i>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The fix isn\u2019t a moonshot. The relevant standards \u2014 <a class=\"underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current\/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current\" href=\"https:\/\/www.khronos.org\/gltf\/\">glTF<\/a> for digital rendering and <a class=\"underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current\/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current\" href=\"https:\/\/www.color.org\/iccmax\/index.xalter\">ICC Max<\/a> for physical material appearance \u2014 already exist and were designed to be connected. Digital textile printing already makes it possible to produce fabrics with pigment recipes that match under any lighting condition, not just one. What\u2019s missing is coordination: brands putting spectral consistency requirements into their supplier purchase orders, the same way the GMI certification transformed packaging quality once Target and Home Depot required it. The <a class=\"underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current\/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current\" href=\"https:\/\/www.khronos.org\/3dcommerce\/\">Khronos 3D Commerce Working Group<\/a> has already standardized how products look across digital screens \u2014 the next step is bridging that standard to the physical object. When we get this right, a sofa stays in the home it was ordered for instead of traveling a thousand miles back to a distribution center and ending up in a landfill. That\u2019s what circularity looks like when it\u2019s applied to the seam between the digital world and the physical one. Follow Don\u2019s work at <a class=\"underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current\/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current\" href=\"https:\/\/whattheythink.com\/articles\/author\/222\/\">WhatTheyThink.com<\/a> and on X at <a class=\"underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current\/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DCarli\">@DCarli<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Subscribe to <em>Sustainability In Your Ear<\/em> on <a class=\"underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current\/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current\" href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/earth911-com-sustainability-in-your-ear\/id1384301001?mt=2\">iTunes<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Follow <em>Sustainability In Your Ear<\/em> on <a class=\"underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current\/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current\" href=\"https:\/\/www.spreaker.com\/user\/earth911\">Spreaker<\/a>, <a class=\"underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current\/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current\" href=\"https:\/\/www.iheart.com\/podcast\/966-Earth911com-Sustain-29715785\/\">iHeartRadio<\/a>, or <a class=\"underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current\/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current\" href=\"https:\/\/youtube.com\/@elkcreeknotes?si=OYncOJMSzZ857f4L\">YouTube<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Interview Transcript<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 0:08<\/p>\n<p>Hello \u2014 good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear, the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society. I\u2019m your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation today.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s take another look at the topic of e-commerce returns and how to reduce them by tuning the economy for less waste. We\u2019re going to start with making what you see online look like what you receive on your doorstep.<\/p>\n<p>Now here\u2019s a number that should stop you in your tracks the next time you shop online: $850 billion. That\u2019s how much retail and e-commerce returns will cost in 2026. And here\u2019s another number: 8.4 billion pounds of landfill waste generated by those returns in a single year \u2014 roughly the same as burying 10,500 fully loaded Boeing 747s in the ground. That\u2019s a lot of waste.<\/p>\n<p>Now you might assume that most of these returns are about fit \u2014 pants that don\u2019t fit, shoes that pinch. But 22% of consumers report returning items because the product looked different in person than it did online, and for home goods and textiles categories, where fit isn\u2019t the issue, that percentage climbs even higher. A sofa that passes every quality specification still gets returned because it clashes with the throw pillow that also passed every specification \u2014 when they don\u2019t look alike in the home, both can end up in a landfill, because repackaging costs more than recovery.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s conversation is about why that happens and what we can do about it. My guest today is Don Carli. Don\u2019s a good friend and the founder of the consulting firm NEMA Hunter Incorporated. Two of Don\u2019s recent articles on the site What They Think got me thinking about how an apparently esoteric discussion of color calibration and spectral profiles actually represents something much larger \u2014 the fine-tuning we can do to the 20th-century industrial system that was never designed to connect digital promises to physical reality.<\/p>\n<p>Don is also a Senior Research Fellow with the nonprofit Institute for Sustainable Communication, where he has directed programs on corporate responsibility, sustainability, advertising, marketing, and enterprise communication. He\u2019s also a member of the board of advisors for the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design and a member of the Institute for Supply Management.<\/p>\n<p>So here\u2019s why this matters beyond the print and packaging industry, where Don has spent most of his career. The 20th century built industrial systems optimized for mass production: make a lot, ship it out, and hope people keep it. These systems created enormous efficiencies on the one hand, but they also created enormous waste \u2014 often hidden in the seams between suppliers, brands, and retailers, where no single stakeholder owns enough of the problem to force a solution. In fact, it really means nobody lost enough money to care.<\/p>\n<p>What Don\u2019s work reveals is that we now have the technical architecture to fine-tune these legacy systems \u2014 not replace them, but recalibrate them. The standards exist. The measurement hardware exists. The digital rendering pipelines exist. What\u2019s missing is the coordination: getting brands, retailers, and others to share data they currently hold separately, and to recognize that the costs they\u2019re each absorbing individually are symptoms of the same system failure \u2014 a failure of color calibration.<\/p>\n<p>And this is what sustainability can look like in practice: not moonshot reinventions, but the patient technical work of closing gaps between digital and physical, between specification and reality, and between what we promise customers and what we deliver. If we get this right, we can reduce waste, cut costs, and rebuild trust with consumers who\u2019ve learned to expect that what they see online isn\u2019t quite what they\u2019re going to get.<\/p>\n<p>You can follow Don\u2019s work on X. His handle is @DCarli \u2014 that\u2019s spelled D-C-A-R-L-I, all one word, no space, no dash.<\/p>\n<p>So can we calibrate what we see online with what we experience when we open a package, reducing the need to return a purchase? Let\u2019s find out after this brief commercial break.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[COMMERCIAL BREAK]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 4:29<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to the show, Don. How are you doing today?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 4:31<\/p>\n<p>Fantastic, Mitch. I\u2019m really glad to be here with you today and looking forward to the conversation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 4:37<\/p>\n<p>Always great to talk with you, Don. This came up in our discussions over the past couple of months, and then I read the article and wanted to follow up. To start off, can you walk us through a typical scenario? A customer orders a navy sectional and a matching throw pillow from different suppliers. They appear to be the same color \u2014 they both pass all the quality specifications we\u2019ve talked about \u2014 but under the living room lights, the consumer finds they clash. What happened between the approved image and her disappointment? Where did the system break down?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 5:15<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve all had this experience at some point in our lives. In part, it\u2019s because of the nature of human perception. We would like to think that color is a constant thing, but color is an interaction of multiple variables.<\/p>\n<p>One variable is the light source \u2014 specifically, the distribution of wavelengths in that light. As you know, the visible spectrum is a small part of all the radiation there is. There\u2019s ultraviolet light you can\u2019t see, there\u2019s infrared light you can\u2019t see, and then there\u2019s all the colors in between \u2014 the ROYGBIV: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet \u2014 the colors we\u2019re familiar with. Every light source has a different distribution of those energies.<\/p>\n<p>Second, the material an object is made of has its own capacity to absorb different wavelengths, and that can vary. So you have variation in the energies emitted by the light source, variation in the energies absorbed and reflected by the object, and then there\u2019s the viewer. Our visual system takes up a big part of our brain \u2014 it\u2019s not just our eyes, but our eyes have a lot to do with it. Some of us are colorblind, for example, and in other cases, color is simply not a constant thing.<\/p>\n<p>I worked with the Bauhaus artist Josef Albers for many years \u2014 he wrote the book The Interaction of Color. He used to say, \u2018When you put one color next to another color, you get a third color for free,\u2019 because those two colors interact with each other.<\/p>\n<p>To put it simply: you put on a pair of socks and a pair of pants in your bedroom under incandescent light. The pants are brown, the socks are brown. You go out into the daylight. The pants look green. The socks are still brown. What happened? The light changed. Because daylight has more energy at one end of the spectrum, it reflects more blue light, making the brown look greener.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 7:56<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s really interesting to think about \u2014 how we\u2019ve moved from an era of commerce where, say, items in the Sears catalog were originally sketched, versus photographed. As we introduced greater verisimilitude in our catalogs, or on Amazon \u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 8:17<\/p>\n<p>We set expectations differently. Exactly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 8:20<\/p>\n<p>So how should we think about the expectations we\u2019re setting \u2014 both as sellers of things and as consumers? How should we be thinking about this?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 8:30<\/p>\n<p>In part, most of this is simply not taught. Most students in grade school, high school, or even university are not given any exposure to the psychology of human perception. There\u2019s a physiological and psychological basis to all of this, and we just don\u2019t know about it.<\/p>\n<p>The problem has always existed. What\u2019s happened with e-commerce \u2014 and with sophisticated computer graphic rendering of objects that don\u2019t yet exist in the real world but look real \u2014 is that we\u2019re setting expectations. On my screen I see this couch. It looks brown. The pillows look brown. So I expect that when they arrive, they\u2019re both going to look brown.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the lighting in homes now is no longer even incandescent. LEDs have really unusual spectral curves \u2014 they can be the problem. If I had been able to see what those items were going to look like under the lighting in my home, I might be less disappointed. I\u2019d say, \u2018Oh, wait \u2014 they don\u2019t match.\u2019 But in developing the systems for e-commerce, the companies that develop software for rendering \u2014 the tools designers use to develop the rendering of images for websites and monitors \u2014 simply don\u2019t take these things into consideration.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 10:10<\/p>\n<p>Our economy was massified in the 20th century but it\u2019s moving toward personalization in the 21st century. And what you\u2019re describing \u2014 what you named in the article \u2014 is metamerism.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 10:21<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not my term. It\u2019s metamerism \u2014 or \u2018metamerism,\u2019 yes. That\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 10:27<\/p>\n<p>This phenomenon, combined with changing lighting technology and the changing nature of our homes \u2014 which can allow more or less light in, and offer a variable lighting palette \u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 10:37<\/p>\n<p>A variable lighting palette, yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 10:38<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 suggests that the palette will always be changing. So how do we create consistent expectations among consumers when we\u2019re trying to communicate what we offer?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 10:57<\/p>\n<p>Well, standards help to begin with. We do not have a set of coordinated standards today that allow the designer to anticipate the observer\u2019s environment and lighting conditions for a given product. Second, we don\u2019t have standards in place to communicate between what the designer intends and what the manufacturer produces \u2014 because it is possible to create pigments and dyes that do not exhibit metamerism. Really.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been standard practice in some industries where it matters. If you go to an informed paint company and say, \u2018I want a non-metameric match of this swatch,\u2019 they would use a device called a spectrophotometer, which measures the absorption curve of the pigments employed \u2014 so that under any lighting condition, the appearance doesn\u2019t change, because the curves have been matched.<\/p>\n<p>But I can create a match that only looks correct under one light source, which is typically what happens when people revert to either a monitor \u2014 which only has three emitters: red, green, and blue \u2014 or printing, where typically you have cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. If you want to truly match, you have to match the curve.<\/p>\n<p>New printers being used for digital textiles actually have 10 channels, and it is possible to use pigments across those channels to make the absorption curve of the material non-metameric \u2014 or at least less metameric. We\u2019re waiting for standards to come together, and that will only happen, I believe, if the brands suffering the greatest economic loss from this mismatch problem take action to put the requirements in their purchase orders and to support pilots that address that 22% of returns due to color perception that you described.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 13:27<\/p>\n<p>You do point out that IKEA, Amazon, Wayfair, and others have funded the Khronos 3D Commerce Working Group to ensure that products look consistent across different apps and websites. So they want consistency when rendered on a digital screen, but they\u2019re apparently okay with the fact they don\u2019t look the same when they arrive?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 13:54<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I like the disconnect. It\u2019s interesting. First of all, it would require collaboration across industry \u2014 across groups that don\u2019t typically talk to each other. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s willful. I think it\u2019s more like, \u2018Wow, they just haven\u2019t gotten around to that.\u2019 Nobody fully realized how much was at stake. And the potential for a connection between the two standards that do exist is actually very good and straightforward, because they\u2019re both extensible standards.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s needed \u2014 as I said \u2014 is for the businesses that are right now losing approximately $850 billion a year due to returns to ask: How much of that is attributable to consumers who\u2019ve been given permission by e-commerce companies to say, \u2018Something doesn\u2019t look right, so I want to return it\u2019? We\u2019ve made it easy to return things.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 15:09<\/p>\n<p>The customer was always right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 15:11<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s correct. And it\u2019s going to be hard to put that one back in the bottle. So now we have to ask: out of the $850 billion \u2014 which is just the retail cost of the goods, not the cost of reverse logistics, not the cost of reprocessing, not the disposal of that returned product to landfill or incineration \u2014 if you take it all together, it\u2019s probably $1.25 trillion, maybe even $1.5 trillion. And if you said, \u2018Okay, but how much of that is because somebody said the colors don\u2019t match?\u2019 \u2014 even being very conservative, say 10% \u2014 that\u2019s still enough money to justify addressing the root cause of the problem.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 16:00<\/p>\n<p>$150 to $200 billion\u2026.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 16:03<\/p>\n<p>Just rounding error, right? So you could say to companies like Adobe \u2014 that develop the software for rendering objects that are going to be manufactured \u2014 take IKEA as an example. IKEA doesn\u2019t fill its catalogs, whether online or physical (though there\u2019s no longer a physical catalog), with actual photography. Those are computer-generated images. They look real, but they don\u2019t exist in the physical world when rendered. Very often, the product isn\u2019t manufactured until after you\u2019ve bought it \u2014 you bought it on the basis of a computer graphic rendering that looks photorealistic. It\u2019s called Physically Based Rendering.<\/p>\n<p>So if those systems were specifying color with the manufacturing process in mind \u2014 which is very often digital textiles printing \u2014 they could choose their colors to be less subject to metamerism, or even to specifically eliminate metamerism. They could also provide the ability to predict: run the model through a set of tests to see, \u2018Is this design going to be subject to metamerism?\u2019 And carry that logic forward to the manufacturer. They\u2019d have to put that in their purchase orders. They\u2019d have to bridge two standards \u2014 one called glTF, the other called ICC Max.<\/p>\n<p>The point is, the consumer doesn\u2019t need to know any of this. The consumer needs to understand that it\u2019s possible to make things match under different lighting conditions \u2014 or at least to have less divergence from their expectations under different lighting conditions.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 17:58<\/p>\n<p>I agree that the consumer should be able to expect that. What I hear is that so far, the pain hasn\u2019t been great enough. But we\u2019re also at a point where simply reducing the waste would be worthwhile on its own, with other benefits as well \u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 18:10<\/p>\n<p>Oh, absolutely. But the financial ones alone \u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 18:15<\/p>\n<p>The financial ones are enough? Yes. And then all the environmental and social costs of returns on top of that. But let\u2019s talk about how to actually hack toward a solution. Is it possible now \u2014 or over the course of the next decade, say \u2014 for me to have a phone app that I use in my home? I sample the light in the morning, I sample the light at noon, I sample it at sundown, and in the evening \u2014 sometimes with external light, sometimes with just internal. I could say, \u2018This is my light profile. Give me things that will look like what I expect.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 19:00<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a great question. The question is: would the average consumer go to that extent? Probably not. But the retailer could do what amounts to a survey of the whole home that the products are going to go into. If it\u2019s a major purchase \u2014 a couch, carpets, a new home \u2014 you could model the interior of that house very easily.<\/p>\n<p>Technologies like Matterport, for example, can scan the interior of a house and give you a virtual view of what it looks like \u2014 they use it in real estate all the time. So that\u2019s possible. And it\u2019s also possible to model different lighting scenarios: you say, \u2018I\u2019m going to put in LED lighting with variable color temperature, so during the day I may look at it under one light, and at night it\u2019s going to be warmer.\u2019 You can factor in where natural light comes in through windows across the year.<\/p>\n<p>But that may be overkill for most consumers. It might be appropriate for businesses \u2014 especially places where the harmony of floor coverings, wall coverings, and furnishing objects matters. Still, it shouldn\u2019t be necessary for the average consumer.<\/p>\n<p>Phones are increasingly gaining the ability to sense color in a spectral sense. I think within three years, that capability should be standard in most phones as a matter of course, and more specialized devices will be available for around $100 if you want them. But I think it\u2019s really incumbent on the retailer and the brands \u2014 not on the consumer \u2014 to meet expectations first and foremost. And I think an increasing number of consumers who care about environmental and social costs are going to put that expectation on the retailer and the brand: model the environment, predict the degree to which the products being manufactured are subject to metamerism. Those variables can be measured and controlled in design and manufacturing so that the in-home or in-store environment is less subject to lighting variation affecting the perception of color match.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 21:55<\/p>\n<p>So I think this is a great place to stop and take a quick commercial break, because we\u2019ve set the stage \u2014 and the lighting \u2014 to talk about what\u2019s going to come next. Let\u2019s figure out the hack. Stay tuned. We\u2019ll be right back.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[COMMERCIAL BREAK]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 22:13<\/p>\n<p>Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Let\u2019s get back to my conversation with my friend Don Carli. He\u2019s founder of NEMA Hunter, a market research and product design advisory firm in New York City.<\/p>\n<p>Don, so we understand the variability of light, the variability of settings, the combination of colors \u2014 all of these affect our perception of color. And we talked about the fact that phones will have increasing photographic analysis capabilities, so they can sense the full spectrum, not just what we see but the entire range of light affecting our perception. But as you say, it really is incumbent upon the retailer to have a solution that makes something look like my expectation when it arrives at my home. Is this a suggestion that the future of retail is more personalized \u2014 that there may be personal shoppers who come to your home early in a brand relationship and do a scan, or who give you the tool? Maybe they send it to you and you return it after completing your color profile. Are we at the beginning of really tuning the economy to deliver exactly what we want so that waste can be reduced?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 23:29<\/p>\n<p>I think there are examples of it already in place. There\u2019s a very interesting company that grew out of a team of Navy SEALs and special operations people who had to model environments they were going to enter \u2014 and they couldn\u2019t do that using big, complex systems. They needed a hack. They were able to take imagery from various sources and build a 3D model reconstruction of a building so they could plan their approach. One of them left and started a company called Hover.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t a commercial for Hover, but it\u2019s an interesting case. Hover solved a problem for people who wanted to remodel the exterior of their homes. You could take your phone, take six to eight photos of your house from the exterior, send those photos to Hover, and they would create a 3D reconstruction of your home. Then they worked with manufacturers of siding, roofing, and windows, and allowed the builder to generate not only an estimate of what it would cost to put new siding and windows on your house, but a rendering of what it would look like. The precedent is there: the consumer had the device, nobody had to go out to do an estimate, the contractor loved it because they didn\u2019t have to send anyone to measure \u2014 all done accurately using cell phone imagery.<\/p>\n<p>Matterport is another company that makes a device for interiors and does the same thing. And there are small sensors that a retailer could send you that measure color temperature of light \u2014 but I don\u2019t think that will be strictly necessary.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 25:31<\/p>\n<p>Nor necessarily environmentally responsible, to send out loads of sensors.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 25:34<\/p>\n<p>Exactly. So for the retailer, like Radio Shack, if it\u2019s an in-store environment, that\u2019s one thing \u2014 they do have the ability to simulate different lighting conditions in-store. Think of it like going to an audio shop \u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 25:54<\/p>\n<p>You can\u2019t do that anymore, but okay.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 25:56<\/p>\n<p>Just imagine going to buy a stereo, or to an audiophile shop \u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 26:03<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re showing our age, knowing what that is.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 26:05<\/p>\n<p>They bring you into a listening room. The point is, it\u2019s constructed for the purpose of evaluating what something is likely to sound like in your home. I think we can do the same thing in-store with variable lighting.<\/p>\n<p>But online is becoming e-commerce where items are never in a store. You order from a computer-rendered image on your screen, and after your order is placed, the item is manufactured. That\u2019s the link that has to be established: the link between the creator of the design for the object and the supply chain instructions provided to the manufacturer, so that the objects are not subject to metamerism \u2014 so they are less subject to variation in the lighting conditions in your home. It is a matter of giving the correct instructions about the materials to be used, and specifying how they\u2019re to be measured by the manufacturer. The brands that design the couch, the pillow, the carpet, the curtain, the flooring \u2014 they should own the equipment to do the measurement and support the linkage of the standards that communicate how to maintain color consistency across different lighting and viewing conditions, so the consumer isn\u2019t disappointed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 27:41<\/p>\n<p>This brings me to another concept you introduced, which is the appearance bill of materials \u2014 which is in many ways similar to the digital product passports we\u2019ve talked about on the show a number of times, which describe a product\u2019s components and potentially how to recycle it. But this color profile \u2014 what would be involved in making that happen at scale? What would it look like to make that a common practice for a furniture retailer, for instance?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 28:10<\/p>\n<p>Think of recipes. The way a fabric is produced is changing because of digital printing. We used to make fabric in large quantities using dyes \u2014 extremely polluting, very complex \u2014 or with high-volume screen printing using fixed screens. Increasingly, fabric printing is achieved digitally, where you can print just one yard or 10 yards of a material using any palette of pigments, matched not just to look correct under one lighting condition, but to look consistent under any lighting condition.<\/p>\n<p>The example of metamerism is: if I have two objects that are supposed to match, and under one lighting condition they do match, but under another they don\u2019t \u2014 that is metameric. It changes. But if I blend, or use the right pigment recipe on a given substrate material, they will match regardless of the lighting condition. The pillow matches the couch, the wall covering matches the floor covering.<\/p>\n<p>To do that, you have recipes. I\u2019m going to use this combination of inks, and I have to measure them with a spectrophotometer. The specifier has to tell the manufacturer what the material characteristics are. It\u2019s the same as saying, \u2018Use butter, sugar, and flour\u2019 \u2014 but not all butter, sugar, and flour are the same. Or like architects who say, \u2018Use concrete, aluminum, steel, and wood\u2019 \u2014 but what\u2019s the actual recipe for the steel, the concrete, the wood? We have to be more specific at the design and manufacturing stages.<\/p>\n<p>It is kind of like a digital product passport. The standard for glTF, which is used for Physically Based Rendering on monitors, is consistent for rendering on screens \u2014 but it doesn\u2019t extend to the world of physical objects, inks, and substrates.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 30:59<\/p>\n<p>So that\u2019s the link. Thank you. You\u2019ve also pointed out that the GMI certification \u2014 which Target, Home Depot, and CVS began to require, and which describes packaging \u2014 was broadly accepted once those brands introduced it. Would color matching with the guarantee that it will look like what you saw when you receive it be a significant differentiator \u2014 a value-added differentiator \u2014 that would set a brand apart if they embraced and practiced it consistently?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 31:34<\/p>\n<p>Why not? We know that consumers are disappointed enough to go through the return process \u2014 and it\u2019s not simple. It\u2019s an annoyance. You\u2019re putting people out of their way. They want their couch, they want their cushions, they want their floor covering. They don\u2019t want to go through what it takes. It\u2019s going to be another two weeks, and I\u2019ve got to document all of this, and I have a party this Friday \u2014 we\u2019re getting married, whatever it is.<\/p>\n<p>So I think the demand is there. And what GMI established reflects something I believe has been true in manufacturing as long as I\u2019ve known it: manufacturers are going to do what their customers call them to do. If the requirement in the purchase order is that you must adopt this standard or use this material, you don\u2019t argue \u2014 if you want the work, you do it. But if you leave innovation in materials to manufacturers and expect them to market and sell it, that\u2019s not their strength. They\u2019re not marketers.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, retailers and brands are marketers \u2014 and ultimately, the cost is not just economic but environmental and social. That\u2019s where I think today\u2019s consumers, if made aware, will be able to apply enough incentive to brands to build those linkages, use those standards to minimize the cost of returns and the environmental impact of returns, and have a positive impact on customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and the ability to attract consumers for whom systems thinking and circularity matter.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 33:30<\/p>\n<p>So the cost of these returns \u2014 which we\u2019ve estimated in the $1.3 to $1.5 trillion range \u2014 who actually ends up paying that? Would solving this problem represent a tangible reduction in costs for consumers overall?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 33:47<\/p>\n<p>It is costing consumers in the end. Let\u2019s say a retailer bought the product for 25% of the retail price. So the thing sold for $100 but cost them $25. When they say they lost $850 billion, they\u2019re estimating that at the full retail price \u2014 but it only cost them $25.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 34:19<\/p>\n<p>Of course, because that gives them an advantage in taxes \u2014 but if \u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 34:23<\/p>\n<p>If in fact they\u2019re losing 25% of their sales to returns, that\u2019s still going to factor into what they mark things up to recover those costs. It does impact the cost to consumers in the end. And then there are the real costs associated with reverse logistics \u2014 shipping it back from you to the distribution center \u2014 and then that has to be reprocessed: someone has to inventory it now that it\u2019s been returned, inspect it to see if it\u2019s viable for resale, find a resale partner. Or, as some retailers now do, they simply keep them in huge containers labeled as \u2018lot number four\u2019 and have people bid on them sight unseen \u2014 unpack those, find the few things in the box that were worth something, and discard the rest.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 35:33<\/p>\n<p>So the consumer today expects greater and greater personalization, as you\u2019ve described. On-demand manufacturing is a potentially scalable solution that\u2019s beginning to emerge. But if we don\u2019t master this metameric strategy, returns may actually increase \u2014 because the expectation is even greater that it should look exactly like it did when I ordered it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 35:59<\/p>\n<p>Yeah. Appearance mismatch is not the greatest reason for returns \u2014 but it\u2019s a substantial percentage.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 36:12<\/p>\n<p>My point is to think systemically, rather than just about this particular issue. Is this the right time for us to move toward on-demand manufacturing \u2014 particularly now that we want to reduce imports? And if we do that, who should convene the effort to create consistent perception of color and quality for that next generation of a much less wasteful economy?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 36:43<\/p>\n<p>I think it ultimately falls to the brands and the retailers, as well as the technology providers for rendering \u2014 for the design and rendering of the objects \u2014 because circularity and circular thinking is a systems design challenge. You want to design the problem out of existence, rather than trying to cope with it downstream.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s no question that the greatest potential leverage is through a better design process that anticipates these downstream factors that lead to returns \u2014 whatever they are, whether it\u2019s appearance, fit, or any other reason why people return things. The ability to predict through true digital twins of the object is one key element. You need the NVIDIAs of the world, the Adobes, the Hewlett-Packards, and the instrument manufacturers who can measure color and surface characteristics \u2014 the things that allow you to define the recipe for making the object, as well as the recipe for rendering it on screen.<\/p>\n<p>Those are the key stakeholders: the brands using those tools, the companies providing those tools, and the standards bodies that help to encode them in open, extensible standards that allow businesses to communicate one-to-many, instead of being locked into proprietary one-to-one communication chains.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 38:26<\/p>\n<p>If a brand is listening, what should their first diagnostic step be? Where\u2019s the right place to begin?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 38:36<\/p>\n<p>The first step, of course, is to have a breakdown of the reasons for returns. If they want to address appearance mismatch, they need to know what percentage of their returns are reported by consumers as: \u2018The product I received didn\u2019t meet my expectations in appearance compared to what I saw on my screen or in the store.\u2019 They need to know first: is this a problem big enough to make a business case for addressing it?<\/p>\n<p>In most cases, I think they\u2019ll find that if it\u2019s 10%, 15%, or 20% of returns, that\u2019s material. And if they looked at it not just economically but in terms of environmental and social impact \u2014 triple bottom line, if you will \u2014 I think they can make a business case for why they should seek out a group of like-minded brands to address the root cause through standards and paid pilot programs with manufacturers: to establish and prove that a workflow is possible, practical, and delivers results that reduce cost in a material way, reduce environmental impact in a measurable way, and have a positive impact on customer satisfaction, loyalty, and the ability to attract consumers for whom systems thinking and circularity matter.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 40:15<\/p>\n<p>You do a lot of product research and market research. Are brands thinking about this?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 40:21<\/p>\n<p>Not enough. Not enough. I believe brands like IKEA do take it quite seriously \u2014 and maybe that\u2019s one of the luxuries of being a privately owned entity. So I think we can look to brands like IKEA for leadership. They\u2019ve exhibited that in the past and can continue. But one brand can\u2019t solve this. This is a bigger problem than any one brand can handle.<\/p>\n<p>I think the path forward is really through a coalition of brands that work together and share the costs, the risks, and the benefits of connecting these existing standards \u2014 to the benefit of not just current consumers, but consumers going forward. And I think it will reduce the impact on the environment, help make better use of our manufacturing capacity and digital technology, and support onshoring more of our production. That\u2019s an important way to minimize risk \u2014 not just the risk of returns, but supply chain risk as well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 41:39<\/p>\n<p>What you\u2019re describing is an optimized system that we don\u2019t currently have. I know we\u2019ve only scratched the surface of the color perception problem here, Don. Thank you for helping me understand it. How can folks follow what you\u2019re working on?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 41:53<\/p>\n<p>I write on this topic in an industry publication called WhatTheyThink.com. And there is an active discussion taking place within the Khronos Group, 3D Commerce, and related standards bodies about this general concept of Physically Based Rendering. In the printing world, there\u2019s another group called the International Color Consortium \u2014 ICC.org \u2014 that has been looking at the problem from a manufacturing perspective: how do you manage appearance, not just color but appearance overall, because it\u2019s not only the color of a thing that can differ, sometimes it\u2019s the surface characteristics or texture. These standards take both into consideration.<\/p>\n<p>I think some preliminary discussions are starting to emerge \u2014 whether in Reddit or in these two groups, which are open \u2014 that are beginning to look at how these things connect.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 42:59<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a saying that an airplane is a set of standards in flight. What we\u2019re talking about here is the setting of a standard set of expectations about how our economy should work efficiently. I hope folks take to heart what we talked about today. I want to thank you for your time, Don; this was a fascinating conversation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don Carli<\/strong>\u00a0 43:19<\/p>\n<p>I think it can have a profound impact on the amount of waste that goes to landfill, and I think it will also improve the ability to satisfy increasingly conscious consumers along the way. Thank you, Mitch. Take care.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[COMMERCIAL BREAK]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Mitch Ratcliffe<\/strong>\u00a0 43:49<\/p>\n<p>Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You\u2019ve been listening to my conversation with Don Carli, founder of NEMA Hunter, a market research and product design advisory firm in New York. Don\u2019s commentary on color perception, metamerism, and the gaps in our digital-to-physical rendering pipeline appears regularly at WhatTheyThink.com \u2014 all one word, no space, no dash \u2014 and you can follow him on X at @DCarli, that\u2019s D-C-A-R-L-I.<\/p>\n<p>This conversation started with a sofa and a throw pillow that refused to match, and it ended somewhere much larger. The $850 billion in annual e-commerce returns we discussed \u2014 growing toward $1.25 to $1.5 trillion when you add reverse logistics and disposal costs \u2014 is what happens when a 20th-century industrial system tries to serve 21st-century expectations without changing its underlying architecture. The system was designed to produce at scale and absorb returns as a cost of doing business. The consumer was always right. The platform made returns frictionless. And what got lost in the middle \u2014 in landfills, in incinerators, and in the carbon cost of reverse logistics \u2014 was invisible to the balance sheet and to the customer who clicked \u2018return.\u2019 In other words, we engineered a system to overwhelm people with choice so that they would inevitably buy, but at the cost of tremendous waste.<\/p>\n<p>So Don isn\u2019t just describing a color problem. It\u2019s a calibration problem \u2014 and calibration is a systems problem. You heard about all the parts of the solution that are available already. What doesn\u2019t exist is a coordination layer: the shared commitment by brands and retailers to making a product and the recipe for showing it on screen speak the same language, so that it represents things accurately across a variety of different lighting settings.<\/p>\n<p>The transition Don is pointing toward is from mass manufacturing to what we might call calibrated manufacturing \u2014 production designed not just to meet a specification, but to meet the specific expectations of one person. Personalized manufacturing. The on-demand, digital-first model that\u2019s already emerging will only work if the variety of perceptions we experience is accounted for from the start. If we move to on-demand without solving the metamerism problem, Don warned, returns will increase, not decrease. We will have built a faster, more responsive system for disappointing people.<\/p>\n<p>The circular economy framing that anchors so much of this podcast is usually applied to materials \u2014 keep them in use, close the loop on plastics, design products for disassembly and reuse. But Don\u2019s argument adds a dimension we don\u2019t talk about enough: design for reduced returns is design for circularity too. The waste reduction potential is real, and it needs to happen upstream \u2014 at the design and specification stage \u2014 before a single unit of the product actually ships.<\/p>\n<p>This is what tuning the economy looks like in practice: not a moonshot reinvention of everything, but the patient technical work of closing the gaps \u2014 the many gaps between what we promise and what we deliver as businesses. The leverage points are well defined. Brands and retailers that own product specifications need to bridge the color standards challenge in their purchase orders. And consumers who are already demanding more and returning more can apply market pressure too, especially the growing segment of people for whom systems thinking and environmental impact are part of how they evaluate a brand. But we have to communicate that to the brand and to the policymakers around that market in order to drive systemic change.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019s closing thought is what stays with me: when we actually tune the system to deliver what people want and expect, we can stop producing waste that nobody intended and nobody wants. That\u2019s not just good business. That\u2019s what a circular economy looks like in practice when it\u2019s applied to the seam between the digital world and the physical one \u2014 the place where, right now, billions of pounds of material quietly disappear into the ground.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll continue to explore this \u2014 we\u2019ll probably have Don back to talk more \u2014 and in the meantime, I hope you take a look at our archive of more than 550 episodes of Sustainability In Your Ear. We\u2019re in our sixth season, folks, and I guarantee there\u2019s an interview you\u2019re going to want to share with a friend or member of your family. And by the way, writing a review on your favorite podcast platform will help your neighbors find us \u2014 because folks, you are the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to create less waste. Please tell your friends, your family, your co-workers, the people you meet on the street, that they can find Sustainability In Your Ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness they prefer.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you, folks, for your support. I\u2019m Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we will be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let\u2019s all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/earth911.com\/podcast\/sustainability-in-your-ear-don-carli-on-tuning-what-we-see-online-to-reduce-ecommerce-returns\/\">Sustainability In Your Ear: Don Carli On Tuning What We See Online To Reduce eCommerce Returns<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/earth911.com\">Earth911<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>$850 billion. That\u2019s what retail and e-commerce returns will cost in 2026, generating 8.4 billion pounds of landfill waste \u2014 and a surprising share of it involves products that worked perfectly. They just didn\u2019t look the way people expected. About 22% of consumers return items because the product looked different in person than it did&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5342"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5346,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342\/revisions\/5346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/baldheadedgirls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}