The era of shoes and clothing market may be separated by an RFID

Source of this article: RFID World Net

Author: Araki

"...This year is destined to be an extraordinary year. During the epidemic, retail is sluggish. We have strengthened channel transformation, retained some high-quality stores, and worked together online and offline to build a new retail format, and bring you better in a faster way. Consumer experience..."

With the tags of "A generation of shoe kings have fallen" and "will withdraw from the physical retail business", Daphne made such a statement on the official Weibo.

It is true that this year is a special year, offline physical retail has been greatly impacted, but this is not the root cause of Daphne's decline. Since the emergence and rapid rise of e-commerce at the beginning of the 21st century, online and offline retail has seen a strange situation of harmonious progress and full of smoke, especially for the apparel industry.

Different from the general gray tone in the physical retail industry this year, the fashion darling Uniqlo still insists on its market sinking plan in accordance with the domestic market layout before the outbreak of the epidemic, steadily moving forward, and becoming a dazzling presence. In May of this year, UNIQLO's Chinese store business has returned to the same period last year; between June and August, it opened nearly 30 new stores in more than 20 cities; UNIQLO Japan's sales in August rose by 30%.

For the RFID industry, the deployment of Uniqlo's RFID clothing project and the benefits it obtains are undoubtedly industry benchmarking.

Uniqlo's parent company conducted a pilot RFID electronic tag in the local market in 2015, attaching the rfid tag to the product price garment tag for one-time scanning and checkout; in 2017, it announced that it would introduce RFID tags in global stores to reduce inventory management costs . It also analyzes consumer behavior and realizes a quick response from the production end to the sales end; in 2018, with the high rate of employee turnover in Japanese factories, it built a robotic warehouse and introduced an automated system based on the RFID tags on each piece of clothing. The manpower is reduced by 90%, and it can continue to operate 24 hours a day.

According to statistics, Uniqlo's average inventory turnover days are around 83 days, far less than the average days in the apparel industry. Inventory turnover days is the number of days from the beginning of the product storage to the time it is sold. The fewer days, the faster the product can be realized, the higher the efficiency of inventory management, and the more benefits the enterprise can obtain with the same amount of funds.

The direct sales model is the fundamental reason why Uniqlo can grasp store dynamics and more real and effective data for the first time. This is also a trend in the future of the retail industry to transform and upgrade and find a way out. According to a new research report released by Avery Denison, this year’s epidemic has accelerated the digital transformation of the retail market. It is expected that in the next two years, new contactless retail applications will expand rapidly, in response to changes in consumer demand and Under the trend of more transparency and flexibility in the supply chain, many brands and retailers have begun to sell products directly to consumers.

For example, according to a report on June 28, in order to reduce the losses caused by the epidemic, the sports brand Nike focused its layoffs on traditional wholesale channels and put more energy on online and direct sales. These two sales channels are exactly where RFID technology can play a key role: in online sales, goods equipped with RFID tags can display inventory capacity in real time; in direct sales mode, RFID technology can provide more transparent supply chain data. In 2018, Nike launched anti-theft buckles for sneakers with RFID tags, which also brought data support for Nike's current investment in online and direct sales channels.

Decathlon's RFID project is also representative of the industry. In 2013, Decathlon began to apply RFID tags on its own-brand products, and in 2014 it promoted almost all products in the logistics center. In the same year, it deployed and installed RFID technology in its 800 stores for cash register, anti-theft, inventory check, etc. And now according to the latest news, Decathlon's revenue in 2019 is 100 billion yuan.

With the rise of domestic fitness sports, Decathlon, as a sports goods supplier, has unlimited possibilities now and in the future. Decathlon’s success is not unrelated to its own complete industrial chain. From product production, transportation to sales, even RFID software and hardware equipment are produced by it!

Based on the huge data obtained by powerful RFID, making decisive decisions in the changing of seasons, fashion trends and market trends, and grasping the first-mover advantage, retailers can even lead the future fashion trends in the shoe and apparel retail market.