RFID Announcement on Item Level RFID Tagging

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The first frontier hit in 2003 for RFID by Wal-Mart and the DoD the world’s largest private and public supply chains). They both stared RFID-enabled initiatives, having suppliers to start tagging with RFID so tracking goods would be easier in the supply chain. I was slow to progress especially for Wal-Mart At first they thought it would take off like wild fire and many of the suppliers would buy off on the costly adoption of RFID technology. Well as a RFID provider we had supplier and companies contacting our office for RFID solutions none to say we had many proposals delivered with very little sales. Now we have a second wave of Big Box companies wanting their suppliers to adoption RFID, this new surge is for item-level tagging in apparel. With Item level tagging you get investment in the inventory with replenishment to reduce out-of-stocks and overstocks in retail stores.

Item-level Visibility in Retail

Wal-Mart, Macy’s, JCP, American Apparel, plus others are moving in the direction of item-level tagging quickly. 2012   one billion apparel items were tagged. It is projected to grow significantly this year. Macy’s item level tagging for about 30% of all sales of tags. Representing about 30% of their total annual sales. Marks & Spencer is tagging all apparel and home goods products at all of its stores. American Apparel is rolling out RFID to all of their stores. JCP is using RFID with about 35% of their merchandise. High-fashion retailers is rolling out RFID on 100% of their merchandise at all its retail locations + Distribution Centers. The primary reason here is faster timely replenishment decisions at the store shelf. Reducing out-of-stocks at the store has high value. Better overall Inventory control.

Going Elsewhere for Tag or Doing it in house

Now suppliers are required to apply the tag at the point of manufacturing.  This has become a vendor compliance requirement for the suppliers to JCP, Macys, American Apparel  For many of these suppliers who are SMB( 5-10 million in sales revenue companies) this is big chuck of change.  The expensive piece is having the Tags made for you. As a supplier your costs can be double the cost using a Tag manufacturer to print the tags for you. A resource for doing your own Item Level tagging would be MSA Systems Qstock Item Level Tagging solution. This allows the small supplier to print  tags in house at about ½ the cost with our software and hardware.  The ramp up time is short  according to Marc Hernandez with Agron who had to meet this compliance earlier this year with JCP. He states that it took from start to finish about 4 weeks to get the business process going with the warehouse team with the Qstock RFID Item Level Tagging software.

Justin Velthoen

Justin Velthoen

Justin Velthoen has 20 years of supply chain experience, from food distribution to manufacturing, to systems management and implementation. His primary focus is helping businesses realize the cost savings directly to their bottom line.

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QStock offers Warehouse Control, Integrated Shipping, eCommerce, ASNs, Commercial Invoices, Customer Portal, Drop Ship, Lot & Serial Track and Trace, Work Order, with compliance label printing from FDA UDI compliance to SSCC-18 Labels.

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