By Bob Violino

Oct. 20, 2008—Founded in 1979, Tomorrow's Mother manufactures and markets maternity apparel throughout the United States and Canada. The company leases maternity departments in stores in the United States (Belk, Bergner's, Bon Ton, Boston Store, Carson Pirie Scott, Elder-Beerman, Herberger's and Younkers) and Canada (The Bay). Many of these retailers are located in small towns spread across North America, so it's challenging and time-consuming for Tomorrow's Mother's managers to regularly visit each location to perform manual counts of store inventory.

The company knew that timely, accurate inventory data was critical to achieving business success—and to keeping customers happy. If merchandise failed to move in a timely manner, retailers would clog up valuable shelf space in stores. At the same time, if items were consistently out of stock, there was a good chance customers would begin shopping elsewhere. To provide greater visibility of its garments and better management of its maternity departments in more than 380 stores, Tomorrow's Mother launched a project to deploy a smart-shelf system with RFID-enabled product displays from Seeonic, based in Minneapolis, Minn.

Seeking a new way to collect real-time data regarding garment inventory in all of its stores, Tomorrow's Mother began exploring RFID-based systems that could easily be deployed in maternity departments without impacting the department store's inventory systems.

It's difficult for Tomorrow's Mother to obtain a timely, accurate inventory of clothing items in each store, for a number of reasons. When merchandisers visit the stores, every two to four weeks, there are often errors due to manual counting. "In addition," says Harley Feldman, Seeonic's president and chief technology officer, "by the time the [Tomorrow's Mother] headquarters staff can collect the data and react to it, the on-hands inventory may have been changed significantly."