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Early next month, British retailer John Lewis plans to pilot a flagship store in LondonRFIDproject. At that time, consumers can create custom chairs or sofas using fabrics, furniture models, and fabric samples of their own choosing. The system includes a low-frequency reader built into the counter and passive tags attached to furniture models and fabric samples.
John Lewis has launched the customization service of Any Shape, Any Fabric. Consumers can check the sofa style, color and fabric type on the display in the store, and manually enter the computer in the store to view the renderings. Now, the John Lewis innovation team led by John Vary wants to find a technical solution to make this experiment easier and more interesting.
In the end, Vary’s team developed an RFID system that includes some passive low-frequency tags that can transmit unique ID codes for fabrics and shapes, a synthesis software, and a display that displays the effects of items.
Vary said that in March 2014, he and two team partners began to develop this RFID solution. At that time, the team had a certain understanding of RFID technology. They chose LF tags. Compared with HF and UHF tags, LF tags have a longer reading distance. In addition, the team also developed software to manage label data and integrated LFReaderInstalled on the workbench.
Now, 15 furniture models with RFID tags are displayed in retail stores for consumers to choose from. 20 fabric samples are also attached with RFID tags. Consumers can use the reader to read the labels on styles and fabric samples, and the built-in unique ID code will be automatically transmitted to the software and the synthesized customized renderings will be displayed on the display.
The system will be piloted at the flagship store in London early next month. Vary said that the company will make changes to this system in the future based on the results of the pilot. He declined to disclose the promotion plan of the other 41 store systems.
Vary said: “RFID has brought many opportunities. We can analyze the read data to determine the most popular solutions and launch corresponding products.”
Through this pilot, John Lewis plans to collect data to understand consumer preferences. The company can’t wait to see how consumers use this system.
Vary said that his team also plans to share more technical details with other stores of the company to prepare for the next deployment.
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