3 Biggest Fashion Retail Brands That Use RFID In Business

Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) technology is known for being an excellent solution when it comes to inventory tracking and asset monitoring. This is the reason why it is one of the leading technologies used across a variety of industries, including manufacturing, hospitality, education, and healthcare sectors. However, RFID is more than just an asset-tracking system. It is an all-around solution that is most popular in the retail industry.

As a matter of fact, based on a statistical report by Statista, in 2020, the global market for RFID was forecasted to be sized at about $24.5 billion, and retail applications were projected to account for the biggest share of the market. Today, RFID technology has already almost doubled its global market. This only proves that RFID systems are effective in improving the operations of retail businesses.

Particularly, an increasing number of big brands are now looking at how they can maximise RFID in numerous creative ways. Read on to discover some of the biggest fashion retail brands that now utilise RFID in business.

1. H&M

H&M is a Swedish international clothing retail enterprise that has expanded quickly since its inception in 1947. However, later in the market, H&M saw a significant decrease in its product sales, which allowed other brands like Zara an edge. In fact, in 2017, H&M’s unsold stock had increased to 7%, whereby over $4 billion worth of clothes were unsold. This prompted the top management at H&M to change gears and begin focusing on their use of technology. One of the best technology solutions they adopted is RFID.

H&M began using RFID garment labelling with the objective of enabling their staff to constantly look for product issues and move at a faster rate to address stock oversupply and undersupply. Through RFID, H&M has been able to improve its offers and operations to attract more and more customers. This has then led them to increase or, at least, stabilise their sales and earnings over the past few years.

2. ZARA

Zara has been a rival of H&M for a long time. It is a big fast fashion retail brand that is known for promoting the use of RFID technology in the clothing industry. The brand essentially uses RFID systems to track inventory and tackle the problem of counterfeit products, which is one of the biggest issues in the clothing retail sector. The use of RFID helps Zara and other fashion retail businesses overcome this problem.

Another advantage of RFID that has been allowing Zara to improve its operational efficiency is that it enables the business to tag all its clothes and provide its employees with accurate information about the products. This way, the staff will know when clothes will be out of stock so that they can plan their inventory accordingly. As such, adopting RFID has allowed Zara to easily restock racks of its fast-selling clothing items.

3. Decathlon

Decathlon is among the world’s leading retailers specialising in shoes, sportswear, and other merchandise. This French company consistently sells more than 600 million individual products across the world. They have thousands of stores in South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The primary objective of Decathlon has always been to ensure that its products are available in its stores whenever customers are willing to buy.

Disappointing customers is a huge no-no for Decathlon since unsatisfied customers mean lost sales. For this reason, Decathlon has been looking for ways to optimise its operations, and one of the solutions it found is the use of RFID technology. The use of RFID encourages a fast checkout experience, which, when combined with enhanced item accessibility, allows customers to have a seamless shopping experience. As such, Decathlon did not think twice about integrating RFID systems into its supply chain to improve customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that RFID technology has numerous advantages for the fashion retail industry. However, while RFID has been around for a long time, many small businesses still hesitate to implement this technology in their operations. On the other hand, huge brands like H&M, Zara, and Decathlon have been consistently looking at how they can further maximise RFID in different creative ways. This just shows that an RFID system is surely worth the investment, especially for fashion retail businesses.