Femcare from Hamburg
MYLILY is a femcare startup from Hamburg with a clear mission: build products for every phase of the menstrual cycle, from the first period to menopause. What started as a tampon subscription is now a broad assortment of period products, period swimwear, facial care, and other products around women's health.
Around 15 people are working on the next stage of MYLILY. The company has been profitable since 2024 and generated EUR 3 million in revenue last year.
Pia Brönner has been with MYLILY for almost four years. As product team lead, she owns a large part of the operating system behind the brand: logistics, purchasing, cashflow planning, and Customer Care. That made her the central person when MYLILY redesigned its returns process.
Pia Brönner oversees logistics, purchasing, and Customer Care at MYLILY.
The starting point: Every return began with an email
Before 8returns, MYLILY handled returns completely manually. The website asked customers to email the team if they wanted to send something back. From there, every case had to be processed one by one.
"It really was just manual," Pia remembers. "Customers emailed us. Then we opened a case by email, created the return label by hand, booked the return back in once it arrived, and then created the credit note or negative invoice."
That was manageable in the early days. As order volume grew, it became harder to justify. For customers, the first step already added friction: write an email, wait for a reply, get the label, and track everything themselves. For the team, the key information sat inside individual email threads instead of one central place.
"The tracking for returns was not easily accessible. It was stuck in those emails," Pia says. Return reasons were also pulled out of messages by hand, categorized, and moved into Excel.
The process worked. It just no longer fit a company that was growing.
Why MYLILY chose 8returns
The push came from two directions. The team could see that the manual work no longer matched the rising order volume. And Pia had already experienced 8returns herself as a customer of another brand.
"I used your returns portal at another company and thought: This makes complete sense, having everything bundled instead of doing so much manually."
MYLILY also looked at other providers. The deciding factor was that returns needed to stay in-house. MYLILY ships its own orders, so the team did not need an outsourced logistics setup. They needed a specialist returns platform that digitized their own process and worked with the systems they already used.
The core requirements were clear:
- Connect with Shopify
- Process returns with GLS and DHL
- Map country-specific shipping rules
- Define rules for when MYLILY covers return shipping costs
- Collect all returns information in one place
The rules mattered. When customers paid for outbound shipping, MYLILY covers return shipping under certain conditions. That logic should not live in ad hoc email decisions. It needed to sit inside the process.
Setup: Define the rules once, then let the process run
The most important setup work was mapping the country-specific rules. MYLILY works with different shipping costs and policies across countries. That took some care at the beginning, but it paid off quickly.
"In the end, you do it once for an hour, and after that everything runs by itself," Pia says.
Rules no longer need to be redefined, checked, or debated every time. They are set once and run quietly in the background.
MYLILY also uses return reasons to improve product information and size guides.
The result: Fewer emails, less manual work, more focus
The biggest impact shows up in the team's day-to-day work. Since MYLILY started using 8returns, far fewer returns questions land in Customer Care. Customers can start a return themselves, the label is created during the process, and the team has all information bundled in the platform.
"The internal feedback was great," Pia says. "We were able to reduce our emails significantly and move people onto other projects."
The exact comparison is not easy because order volume increased at the same time. Still, Pia estimates that MYLILY reduced the time spent on returns processing by around 40%.
When one person spends less time creating labels, answering follow-up questions, and recording information by hand, there is more room for work that moves the business forward: product, purchasing, logistics, cashflow, and customer experience.
Store credit as a new retention lever
Before 8returns, MYLILY did not offer store credit inside the returns process. Today, customers use it actively, and it helps the team keep revenue in the business.
"We did not have store credit before," Pia says. "It is being used well and creates a lot of value for us because it keeps customers with MYLILY."
MYLILY retains around 15% of revenue this way. That is revenue retention in daily operations: a return does not automatically end in a refund. Customers get another option that fits the relationship they already have with the brand, whether that means a different product, another size, or credit for the next purchase.
Better return data for better products
The second major impact is data. In the past, MYLILY pulled return reasons from emails and sorted them manually in Excel. Today, that information is collected in the returns portal and can be reviewed regularly.
For Pia, this matters because she works close to the product. Return data is not just reporting for MYLILY. It feeds directly into product information, size guides, and assortment decisions.
"We pull the return reasons and check: Is there something where we need to adjust the size guides? If customers keep saying a product is 'too small,' maybe we need to add a note to the product description or adjust the fit."
That means 8returns supports automation and revenue retention, but also prevention. MYLILY understands why products come back and can turn that insight into practical improvements.
Conclusion
MYLILY shows how quickly a manual returns process can become a growth problem, even in a lean and well-organized team. As long as every return starts by email, too much work stays in Customer Care. Information is scattered, reasons have to be analyzed by hand, and every refund costs time.
With 8returns, MYLILY centralized the process: self-service for customers, automated label creation, clear shipping-cost rules, store credit as a retention lever, and return data that feeds product decisions.
The result is measurable and practical: around 40% less time spent on returns processing, fewer Customer Care emails, and 15% more revenue retained.
All images courtesy of MYLILY.
