RFID Implementation Is an Art

"You need to get the highest guy behind you—not the CIO, but the CEO," said Can. "Getting support for RFID is hard because it's like an SAP implementation: For the first four years, there were no good stories about SAP implementations; then, everybody loved it. The same will apply to RFID."

At Abercrombie & Fitch, Can served as senior director of application development while the company was planning its own RFID trial. Ultimately, he said, management deemed the trial results flawed because the performance in RFID trial stores was too good.

From April to September of last year, A&F tagged jeans in a number of its stores. According to Can, the trial proved that by improving inventory, a firm can also increase sales. "The target was to sell an extra seven pairs of jeans per store, per month," he said. The result, he claimed, was an additional 13 pairs a week. The retailer would not confirm details of its RFID trial.

Can, now vice president at systems integrator Attevo, maintained that his experience at both retailers shows that tags don't have to be much cheaper than they are now to deliver a return on investment from RFID. "For Gap, it was 17 cents, and at A&F, it was 24 cents per tag," he said.

RFID offers clothing retailers a fast and accurate way to know exactly what inventory is either being delivered or available on the shop floor, Can explains. Using handheld readers, 40 units in a box can be read at almost 100 percent read rates within two to three seconds, while 1,000 units on shelves can be read with close to 100 percent accuracy in just a minute.

Still, Can stressed that RFID deployment remains an art. This, he said, is due to the many variables that must be managed to ensure adequate tag read rates. By way of example, he added, "Staff members using handheld readers are different heights, so you don't always get the same read every time."