RFID CASE STUDY
Text: Carl Michener / ID BBN Images: Shutterstock & Nordic ID Drawing: Hanna Östman / Nordic ID
The last time you were in a Zara, Gerry Weber or Esprit store, did you look at item care labels? More and more major fashion retailers source their products directly from a growing number of manufacturers located around the world. Blazers might be made in Turkey, while T-shirts are from Bangladesh or India. A single retailer might source items from dozens, sometimes hundreds, of manufacturers on several continents. One thing that all retailers struggle with is getting products into stores at the right time, in the right quantities. Keeping orders straight and on time is a challenging undertaking, especially when suppliers have very different technical abilities and ways of doing things. Once a shipment enters a logistics company’s care it’s much easier to guess the timing of arrival, but who’s to say that the manufacturer filled the order correctly? If there is a broken link in the chain of apparel procurement, it’s often a manufacturer’s ability to fill an order correctly and on time.
16 • Nordic IDea
GATTER3 A first-mile technology solution