Serge Blanco, a well-known sportswear company, achieves RFID item-level inventory in retail stores
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Serge Blanco, a French luxury sportswear designer and retailer, expanded the RFID tracking system the company adopted in 2009 to test a retail-level inventory tracking application for tags in one of its stores. If the test goes well, the company plans to equip other retail stores with handheld RFID readers to track all products received and delivered to the store shelves, and install fixed door readers in fitting rooms and exits. The store that tested this system is located in Toulon, France, and uses Tagsys’ RFID readers and software. Last year, Tagsys also provided Serge Blanco with an initial supply chain visibility solution.
Since the Serge Blanco garment factory has achieved item-level labeling of the company’s clothing sold, the adoption of RFID readers in stores will further increase the advantages of this technology, said Mathieu Pradier, the company’s director of operations. Initially, the main purpose of the company’s labeling of each garment at the production site was to improve logistics management, he said. The company wanted to increase the capacity of its distribution center in order to manage the 30% annual growth. When this goal was achieved, he explained that Serge Blanco began to look for other applications of this technology.
According to Pradier, if Toulon successfully adopts this system to improve inventory visibility, reduce stock-outs, reduce labor costs and increase sales, the company plans to install the system in all 40 stores.
A Serge Blanco employees use a handheld RFID reader for inventory
Serge Blanco mainly manufactures menswear and sells it in its stores and 320 third-party retail stores in France, Russia, Ireland and Dubai. Due to the company’s rapid growth, in 2008, Serge Blanco assessed the need to expand its distribution center or optimize existing logistics. The company chose the second method, using RFID tags (labeled at the manufacturing point) to gain visibility. The company now uses RFID to track the location of the goods-from the distribution center to the delivery to the store-to ensure that the goods are delivered to the right destination at the right time.
Since March 2010, the employees of the Toulon store have started to use 5 Tagsys HHU-400 handheld readers to read tags. When the store receives clothes, they also carry out inventory counting in the store. Toulon store employees perform inventory counts every day, using handheld readers to read all RFID tags on the store. When the item is purchased, the employee uses the bar scanner on the cash register terminal to identify the clothing being sold, and then remove the label.
“They are currently prescribing the best mode of operation,” said Tagsys President Alain Fanet. Employees use handheld computers to count all items in the store-back-end inventory and sales floor-once an hour. The company plans to evaluate the impact of this process on inventory, increase or decrease man-hours, and the additional benefits brought about by the application of this technology.
A Tagsys fixed RFID reader installed in the fitting room obtains the ID codes of all clothing tags brought into the fitting room. This information is then compared with the POS data to determine that the item was tried on but not purchased.
Another fixed reader is installed at the exit of the store. If the device reads the tags in the vicinity of the exit, it will send an alert to notify the relevant personnel that the tagged item has been taken out of the store-this may mean that the clothing has been stolen. According to the tag ID code read by the exit reader, the store also knows which piece of clothing was taken.
When any fixed or handheld reader in the store reads the ID code of the tag, the information is sent to the company’s back-end system, where the Tagsys middleware e-Connectware compiles the data and forwards it to the inventory management software of the Serge Blanco ERP system. The store can then use this information to learn about the store’s existing inventory and the clothing lost in the store, and then synchronize the POS data to determine whether the item has been sold and when it needs to be re-ordered.
Distribution centers have proven that RFID can reduce labor, Serge Blanco said. Before the adoption of RFID, in a busy day, the distribution center needed 10 workers to receive 25,000 items. After Tagsys installs this system, only two employees can complete the same workload-35,000 items can be received. If replenishment is required, the system notifies the employees of the distribution center.
The company has an annual budget of $396,000 to continue to upgrade the system, Fanet said, including expanding the application to other stores. So far, RFID has saved distribution center labor by automatically receiving and transporting data. The entry and exit time of goods has been reduced by nearly 10 times, which means that the distribution center can accommodate a 40-50% increase in business volume.
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