One trend that will always be in fashion
For Karstadt RFID is a back-pocket strategy for achieving important business objectives.
BACKGROUND
Karstadt is a German retailer which employs more than 36,000 people.
CHALLENGE The company wanted to track goods from the time of arrival at a store to the point of sale, manage its inventory more effectively and locate goods to implement price changes.
SOLUTION Karstadt initiated an RFID pilot scheme. Once completed, 20,000 hang tags with embedded UPM RFID Web inlays were attached to jeans and sportswear items. Each inlay was encoded only with a unique ID in the form of an Electronic Product Code (EPC).
SUCCESS
- The RFID tags enabled sales representatives to efficiently identify items needing to be marked down, helping Karstadt sell goods quicker.
- Inventory for all items in stock can now be done electronically, saving time and money while greatly reducing errors that used to plague the manual process.
- After completing the pilot, Karstadt realized that the benefits of RFID are no passing fad:
→ Incoming goods were processed in eight minutes rather than the previously allocated hour
→ Thanks to RFID inventory management, stock was checked in 20 minutes rather than eighty
→ Price management activities could be conducted in just two hours on a single day, rather than in four days over a two-week period.
