Take-back schemes are strategically appealing and organizationally demanding. Fashion firms across market segments have introduced programmes to collect and recirculate post-consumer garments, yet these programmes consistently struggle to operate commercially or to scale beyond pilot initiatives. This study examines how take-back schemes are implemented and managed in Swedish fashion firms, and what organizational practices enable their continued operation.

A qualitative multiple case study was conducted across three Swedish fashion firms representing distinct market segments, programme maturities, and take-back approaches: Kläddax, a mid-market retailer operating a collection programme since 2021; Koko & Co, a premium brand with circular operations dating to 2008; and Pretty Legs AB, a niche hosiery firm whose Recycling Club has operated since 2016. Semi-structured interviews with the sustainability manager or operational decision-maker at each firm were analysed using thematic analysis, guided by a theoretical framework integrating closed-loop supply chain orientation, orchestration capabilities, reverse supply chain governance, and brand positioning as a contextual moderator.

Three main findings emerge. Take-back schemes are sustained through manual compensation for IT infrastructure incompatibility, governance arrangements adapted to downstream ecosystem type, and emergent practices including design feedback loops and weight-based tracking that existing research has not documented. Brand positioning proves the most consequential firm-level factor: at Koko & Co, circular orientation is self-sustaining because circularity is constitutive of the brand promise, while at Kläddax formal organizational mechanisms must compensate for what brand identity does not provide. Product composition functions as a structural determinant prior to organizational capability: the elastane-based material of hosiery eliminates sorting, Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) integration, and condition-based routing entirely, exposing an assumption of garment heterogeneity embedded in existing frameworks.

The study contributes to the take-back management literature by establishing product composition as a structural antecedent of operational complexity, brand positioning as a moderator of closed-loop supply chain orientation development, and activity-type disaggregation as an analytical prerequisite for evaluating take-back economics.