Transcript
A (0:00)
Fabletics is going all in on rfid. According to our friends over at Retail Touchpoints, Fabletics has launched the G Store software as a service retail solution from Gray orange in over 100 stores. The G Store app's integrated analytics, powered by overhead and handheld RFID readers, can identify items abandoned in dressing rooms, placed in the wrong section, or simply running low on the sales floor. In the stores where the solution has been deployed, Fabletics has achieved 95 to 97% fill rates, completely eliminated manual cycle counts and boosted per location sales by up to 20%. Fabletics is adding the solution to 20 locations per month. And in the next phase, Gray Orange will work with the retailer to enable more efficient store to store transfers through G Store, helping ensure each item is positioned in the location where it's most likely to sell. All right. We here at Omnitalk have long espoused RFID on this show. Are there any counterpoints, Mr. Ben Miller, as to why retailers, especially apparel retailers, should not be invested in rfid?
B (1:08)
Great question. And it's, I'm really pleased to say, for everyone who's going to be in Chicago in a couple of weeks, Mira Bhatia, who's president and chief operating officer of Atabletics, is going to be there and is going to be on a conversation which is all about what can the C suite learn from Frontline from the retail stores. And this gets to the heart of that because yes, on paper, what you can do with rfid, particularly in apparel, is fantastic. What are the challenges? I mean, the first challenge, number one was unit cost of the tags and that's been coming down in the business case. So I think that's less of a hurdle than it has been. But the second one is there's absolutely no point in doing this if you don't have the ability to process the information to take all of these data points and turn it into something that is actionable. And then thirdly, you've got to make sure that your in store staff have the tools, the colleagues have the ability to be able to see the data and to be able to take action from it. So there's no point having RFID saying that this item is over here if you, if your team in store don't have the handheld devices or the apps that they need to be able to see that spot the problem and takes action on it. So for me, making RFID happen, and this has been one of the challenges about scaling it is how do you also scale the technology and the capabilities to help your store associates run their Stores better where we've seen retailers who've been able to crack that. And we talked about Walmart earlier. There is no, it's not a coincidence that they're rolling out their My Walmart app to their team at the same time they're rolling out their RFID technology, where you've got the two working together, yet you can unlock the benefits. And I think that's the conversation we want to have with Mira, is how do you take this investment and make sure that the install team can make it work? That's the Watch out.