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French jeans manufacturer Rica Lewis is now using RFID technology to promote sales and improve customer relationships. By equipping the company’s travel sales staff with RFID readers, they can quickly take inventory when they visit the store.
In the past, when Rica Lewis sales staff visited the sales store, it often took an hour to check the items in the store to understand the inventory and out-of-stock situation. Now Rica Lewis sales staff use a handheld reader to read all the RFID tags of all commodities in the store in just 10 minutes. This greatly saves sales staff’s time, enables them to have more communication with customers (retailers), and can focus more on sales. The data collected by the reader is transferred to a desktop computer and sent to the company’s server via a GPRS connection, so that the replenishment order can be processed quickly.
RFID manufacturer Tagsys provides this system. Didier Mattalia, head of sales for the apparel and retail industry at Tagsys, believes that, unlike apparel manufacturers that operate stores independently, this is the first RFID application project for apparel manufacturers that sell their branded products in major retail stores. In 2007, North American maternity clothing manufacturer Tomorrow’s Mother adopted a somewhat similar system to supply labelled products to its product sales stores in the United States and Canada.
RFID inlay embedded in a paper label
Rica Lewis began implementing this system in retail stores in Paris and southern France in November 2009. The two sales staff in this area are responsible for a total of 40-45 stores. By the end of 2010, the company expects to be fully promoted in France and Belgium. By then, about 40 travel sales staff will carry RFID handheld readers to check store inventory.
Sales staff use handheld computers and handheld antenna inventory
This system is based on the Tagsys clothing and specialty store solution. Rica Lewis uses a Toshiba TEC RFID printer to encode a unique ID code on the Tagsys EPC Gen 2 RFID tag, and then paste the tag on the paper label of the garment. Rica Lewis ships the labels to its suppliers, who apply the labels to the correct garments and then ship the labeled garments to the Rica Lewis distribution center. Currently, clothing suppliers only label 100,000 items sent to retail stores in Paris and southern France. By the end of this year, Rica Lewis will label all of the more than 5 million garments sent to all regions each year.
Currently, the tags are not read when the goods arrive at the distribution center, but the company plans to add this step to the RFID application process as soon as possible. The first reading of the label occurs after the sorting is completed. As early as the clothing manufacturing stage, Rica Lewi knew its destination store and ensured that all clothing sent to these two RFID application areas were labeled. Before the goods are sorted and ready to be shipped, workers use a desktop reader to identify the goods in the box to ensure the correctness of the goods. The Rica Lewis salesperson performs the second and last label reading when inventory is being counted. The company plans to add readers to identify goods loaded on trucks.
Using handheld computers, sales staff can complete in-store inventory within 10 minutes
Rica Lewis stated that the company has benefited from faster replenishment processes and improved customer relationships (because sales managers can now spend more time building relationships instead of inventory), and promote a positive image among its retail customers-including Carrefour, Groupe Casino and Auchan Group establishes the company’s leading position in technology.
RFID technology helps sales staff reduce inventory time by 80%, said Dominique Lanson, president of Rica Lewis, so they can spend more time with customers and improve sales channels.
Clothing manufacturers do not need to test this system, Mattalia said, because Tagsys clothing and retail solutions have been repeatedly tested by other customers, including Serge Blanco.
“It is different from the new technology we used in the past” Lanson added, “Our customers accept RFID very quickly because they can quickly realize that RFID can bring them benefits in order preparation and inventory.”
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