Why outdoor gear stores overspend when they optimise for ROAS

ROAS treats every dollar of revenue as equal. In an outdoor store it isn't. A dollar from a branded jacket sold at a fixed advertised price earns a different margin from a dollar of your own-brand gear. A pair of boots that comes back after a weekend on the trail earns nothing at all. Google Ads records all of them at full value.

The figure above shows how much of that is about fit. In Loop's returns data from Shopify merchants, 61% of footwear returns were for fit or size, and another 20% for style or preference. In that data, fit is the biggest single reason footwear comes back, which matters for any store selling boots, trail runners or technical clothing.

How the gap forms

Same ROAS, different brand margins

Brands can set a minimum advertised price for their products, which fixes what you can show in an ad and caps the margin you can earn. Your own-brand products aren't bound by that. Google Ads bidding optimises toward conversion value, and it can't tell a thin-margin branded sale from a high-margin own-brand one unless you tell it.

Fit returns on footwear and apparel

A footwear return costs more than the refund. You pay to ship it back and inspect it, and you may have to sell it at a discount if it has been worn. Loop's data puts fit behind most footwear returns, which means the loss is concentrated in exactly the products where sizing guidance could prevent it.

End-of-season clearance

When a season ends, leftover gear moves at a discount. Clearance campaigns can post a high ROAS on thin or negative margin, and if they share a target with full-price campaigns they can pull budget toward the least profitable stock. Keep them apart, and the full-price campaigns' results stay a clean read on what the season's new gear really earns.

Working out your own gap

• Report POAS by brand type: resold brands and own brands, separately.
• Measure return rates by category, with footwear and fit-sensitive apparel on their own.
• Keep clearance separate in both campaigns and reporting, so it doesn't blur the full-price picture.
• Read each brand's advertised-price policy before setting targets for resold products. It tells you the lowest price you can show, and so the thinnest margin a campaign on that brand will ever earn.

How to close it

1. Split campaigns by margin band, grouping products by brand type rather than by activity alone.
2. Pass margin, not revenue, to Google Ads as conversion value where you can, so the bidding can tell a thin sale from a rich one.
3. Add size guidance to footwear pages before scaling their campaigns.
4. Give clearance its own campaigns and targets.