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another customer and are waiting to go back into the stockroom, so they should be over… there they are!
retailers are RFID-scanned after being boxed. This reconciliation with the manifest has reduced discrepancies in customer orders to zero. Total capture of delivery information has also resulted in very low shrinkage, thanks to high inventory transparency.
FROM BARCODE TO RFID: A BIG JUMP The technological forerunners of fashion retail have long ago proven the return on their investment in barcode scanners in terms of time saved and dollars earned. They’re now making the jump to RFID technology. Whereas a barcode scanner will tell you that the pair of jeans you took out of a box to scan are women’s Levi’s, an RFID unit will tell you that inside the sealed box at your feet are 12 pairs of women’s relaxed fit faded indigo Levi’s jeans, size 10 and 10 pairs in a size 8. It can also tell you, if you wanted to write such details onto your tags, how long those jeans took at each stop between the manufacturer and your store, what route they took and the ambient temperature all along the way. With RFID you can read a pallet of mixed goods delivered to your stockroom and have an instant record of the sizes and colours of the eight thousand new items you have in stock. FINDING THE FAKES RFID also helps with counterfeiting. Every major brand, from Adidas to Gucci, wants you to buy their product and not a knockoff made on the other side of the world. They also want to keep their manufacturers from running off with an extra 1,000 pairs of sneakers in the dead of night and clandestinely shipping them abroad. How do you guard against these things? Before RFID, protecting your brand’s good reputation required armies of lawyers and teams of investigators. But with RFID it’s very simple. Say, for example, you order 1,000 items to be manufactured. You send your manufacturer care labels to attach to
FASTER GOODS IN With RFID, store employees scan each box with a handset, unpack it and get the inventory out on the floor instead of scanning individual barcodes into the store’s inventory management system. MORE SALES
those 1,000 items. These labels are made with a combination of RFID and secondary information that makes tags easy for you to validate, but impossible for others to duplicate. At point of sale or anywhere along the way, you can use this tag to prove that the given items are the real thing. EFFICIENCY IN ACTION: GERRY WEBER There are many more processes particular to fashion retail that barcode and RFID help with. Dressing room data, better item security, price markdowns and more. But RFID also just plain improves efficiency. By a whole lot. Germany-based fashion retailer Gerry Weber, for example, is the first in the world to implement complete RFID integration throughout the supply chain. Here are some results: LOWER SHRINKAGE, HIGHER TRANSPARENCY All wholesale orders headed for other
SINCE THE BEGINNING,
WITH SOLUTIONS FOR:
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Customer sales and service Stock management Cool, custom applications Pricing and markdowns
LOWER SECURITY COSTS Gerry Weber proved that replacing conventional radio frequency-based electronic article surveillance (EAS) system with RFID costs less and improves aesthetics. In fact, eliminating EAS systems alone has paid for Gerry Weber’s entire RFID integration with retail ERP, wholesale logistics and till systems. Gerry Weber went all the way with RFID and achieved stellar results. But while increasing precision and saving time were important goals for them, they also knew the value of putting employee focus back on the customer. If a handheld electronic device helps staff to do a better job of serving customer needs, so much the better.
A PARTIAL LIST OF FASHION RETAIL CLIENTS INCLUDES:
NORDIC ID HAS SUPPORTED
FASHION RETAIL COMPANIES
Better data quality results in having the right inventory on the floor. In addition to daily sales-based replenishment, Gerry Weber staff performs storewide inventory checks twice weekly, replenishing a missing size or colour as needed, reducing out of stock situations to less than 1%.
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Adidas, worldwide Anne Summers, a UK chain of lingerie stores Anttila, a Finnish department store Gerry Weber, a Germany-based fashion retailer and wholesaler Glitter, a Sweden-based chain of fashion accessory stores Sokos, a Finnish department store Vesch!, a Russian department store
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