With both Hatch and Crawley having backgrounds in healthcare, the duo was constantly pitching each other healthcare ideas. “Probably because of some of our scars, we were constantly shooting each other’s ideas down,” Crawley says. “The idea [for Oops] took hold in late October last year.”

The pair conducted a lot of consumer research and shortly thereafter decided to formally fundraise, drawing on their experience and networks. Oops went on to raise a $5 million seed round led by Peterson Partners and joined by EPIC Ventures, Maverick Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, Village Global, and angel investors. 

 “Using an intuitive website and mobile app for iPhone and Android, Oops solves the pain of making returns by doing all the heavy lifting,” states an Oops press release. “Customers simply schedule a pickup, and an Oops driver in a signature blue van completes the return on the customer’s behalf. Boxes and printed labels are not required, and all returns are insured up to $1,000.” 

When you think about a return, it looms over your head, Crawley says. You put the return by your garage door and don’t complete it for ages. Sometimes, you miss the return window. Some people don’t do returns at all because of the headache and decide to keep the items, even if they never use them.

Oops solves pain points like printing and packaging. The company prints the labels, packages the items, and supplies boxes by reusing recycled ones from customers. Next, an Oops driver picks the items up from the doorstep and takes them wherever they need to go. 

That’s not all, Crawley says. Oops also picks up donations like couches and bags of clothing and delivers the donation to secondhand stores like Deseret Industries, Savers, and Goodwill—all places that often have long lines of cars. 

Hatch says returns are painful for customers and brands, which is why Oops is focused on building the infrastructure that reinvents the way returns happen. “When you’re in our warehouse, and you see what we’re returning and where we’re returning items to, you see how silly the current model is,” he says.

Oops launched in June, serving neighborhoods from Ogden to Spanish Fork. The company is scaling fast and has plans to expand its service areas in the upcoming months. 

Crawley compares the $761 billion of gross merchandise returned last year to the $773 billion defense budget, which he says is the equivalent of multiple countries’ GDP. “Like first-world countries’ GDP—that’s how much we just returned. North of 55 percent of items that get returned don’t end up back on the shelf,” he says. 

Sustainability is one of the driving forces behind Oops. “If you’re looking at hundreds of billions of dollars worth of retail, that just goes to waste right now. We look at the problem and say, ‘There has to be a better way.’ This is just where we’re starting,” Crawley says. “It’s definitely not going to be the only place we touch regarding returns. There’s a lot of opportunity for us to improve efficiency, the customer experience, and reduce waste and CO2 emissions from people running costly errands.”