7 GTM Lessons From Building a Pre-Purchase Returns Reduction Category

7 GTM Lessons From Building a Pre-Purchase Returns Reduction Category

Most founders stumble into their business idea. Oscar Rundqvist walked directly into his. While leading digital customer experience at H&M, he watched a $800 billion problem unfold in real-time, and realized nobody was solving it the right way. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Oscar Rundqvist, CEO and Co-Founder of eComID, shared the tactical lessons from building a category that didn’t exist a year ago.

Lesson 1: Find the White Space Adjacent to Crowded Markets

The returns management space was already crowded when Oscar started eComID. Smart companies were building post-purchase solutions to help brands handle returns efficiently. But Oscar identified a critical gap in the market.

“There are a lot of really good startups and innovators within returns management. So post purchase, helping brands to deal with the returns when they occur,” Oscar explains. “But what we saw is that there are fewer brands and startups that help brands reduce the returns proactively.”

This distinction became eComID’s entire positioning strategy. Instead of competing in returns management, they created the pre-purchase returns reduction category. The lesson here isn’t to avoid crowded markets entirely, but to look for the adjacent white space where the real problem exists but nobody’s solving it yet.

Lesson 2: Let the Problem Find You Before Scaling Marketing

Counter to typical startup advice, eComID hasn’t deployed aggressive marketing tactics. “Right now we haven’t really applied that many active marketing strategy,” Oscar notes. “Currently I think it’s more word of mouth brands find us through LinkedIn, I guess, Instagram.”

But this isn’t lack of ambition. It’s strategic patience. “We have a waitlist on our side with brands signing up on a weekly basis right now,” Oscar says. When you’re creating a new category, you don’t need to manufacture demand if the problem is acute enough. The market will find you while you’re still figuring out product-market fit.

Lesson 3: Acknowledge Industry-Wide Problems to Build Industry-Wide Solutions

Most startups position themselves as helping individual companies beat their competitors. eComID took a different approach by acknowledging that “product returns is not one brand’s problem, it’s an industry wide problem.”

This framing does something powerful. It removes the zero-sum competitive dynamic and positions eComID as a platform for collective action. When you’re trying to change consumer behavior at scale, individual brands can’t do it alone. By framing the problem as industry-wide, eComID can build network effects into their solution.

“We acknowledge it’s an industry wide problem, then we also want to provide an industry wide solution,” Oscar explains. This isn’t just positioning, it’s product strategy. It opens the door to data sharing, industry benchmarking, and collective incentive structures that wouldn’t be possible with a single-brand approach.

Lesson 4: Do Your Due Diligence on Investors

Having raised over $3 million with multiple term sheets on the table, Oscar learned that fundraising isn’t a one-way interview. “When you are a Founder, you can also do your due diligence on your investors,” he emphasizes. “It’s not just you being interviewed and reviewed by your investors. You can also do the same thing back.”

This mindset shift is critical for early-stage founders who often feel they should be grateful for any term sheet. Oscar used eComID’s leverage to ensure investor alignment on values and vision, not just valuation. The result? “We have a really nice now cap table with investors that we really are happy with.”

The lesson: treat investor selection like co-founder selection. You’re entering a long-term relationship, and misalignment on values or vision will create friction when it matters most. If you have multiple term sheets, use that leverage to find true partners, not just capital.

Lesson 5: Scale Through Depth, Not Breadth

Despite having a growing waitlist, eComID is deliberately limiting customer onboarding. “We intentionally right now are not onboarding all brands at the same time,” Oscar explains. “We rather want to have fewer but better and I guess in a way deeper relationships with a few brands we select to onboard.”

This quality-over-quantity approach allows eComID to learn deeply from each customer when the product and category are still evolving. It creates scarcity that can accelerate enterprise sales later, and prevents spreading resources too thin before proving the model.

Lesson 6: Turn Behavior Change Into Status Symbols

One of eComID’s most interesting future strategies addresses the hardest part of category creation: changing consumer behavior. Oscar’s vision goes beyond product features to cultural transformation.

“We want to make it cool to shop in a responsible way and we want to make it rewarding,” he says. The company is exploring gamification where low return rates unlock early access to new collections and exclusive events. “Imagine if the kids could compare the return rates and the ones with low return rates would encourage in a way.”

This lesson applies beyond sustainability. When your product requires behavior change, don’t just make the right behavior easy, make it aspirational. Turn metrics into status symbols. Create social proof around the behavior you want to encourage. The goal is shifting cultural norms, not just individual purchases.

Lesson 7: Use Education as Category Creation

When you’re inventing a category, education is your primary GTM motion. “The category that we’re inventing, kind of returns reduction or pre purchase returns reduction is quite new,” Oscar acknowledges. “It’s not that they actively know it’s something to look for.”

eComID’s response is to “engage wherever this is discussed, trying to encourage this to be discussed even more.” They’re also banking on regulation to accelerate awareness: “Hopefully, and probably there will come some regulation soon.”

The nuance: Oscar isn’t just educating about the problem, he’s shaping how people think about solutions. By consistently using “pre-purchase” and “proactive” framing, eComID is creating the mental category before competitors can claim it. Category creation isn’t about being first to market, it’s about being first to define the terms of the conversation.

Oscar’s journey with eComID demonstrates that category creation doesn’t require massive budgets or complex strategies. It requires clarity on what problem you’re uniquely positioned to solve, patience to let the market validate that positioning, and discipline to scale deliberately rather than desperately.