A New ROI Tool for Apparel and Footwear RetailersOur calculator will help companies determine which benefits RFID can deliver, and enable them to run pilots resulting in information that will determine whether it makes sense to deploy the technology.
Jul 27, 2009—For the past few months, RFID Journal has been developing a calculator to enable apparel and footwear retailers to estimate the potential return on investment (ROI) they can achieve from deploying radio frequency identification technology in their stores. Real-world pilots and deployments have shown that RFID can reduce out-of-stocks, improve inventory management, enhance customer service and ultimately boost sales—while reducing labor costs. Our goal is to offer retailers a tool that will help them decide whether deploying RFID in their stores is a good investment.
Apparel and footwear retail is an area in which calculating the ROI for an RFID deployment is fairly straightforward. While all stores have different layouts, product mixes and processes, the main tasks by store associates are fairly similar. All retailers have to receive goods into inventory, determine what has been sold and replenish. The RFID equipment required to accomplish these tasks is similar, so the costs can be estimated (and actual costs can be entered after you conduct a pilot).
You enter information about the average number of items on the sales floor and in the back room, as well as their average selling price and margin. You plug in the number of hours, on average, that store associates spend receiving goods into inventory, cycle counting and replenishing. And then you provide information regarding the number of receiving doors, replenishment stations and doors there are between the back room and sales floor, so the tool can estimate the cost of hardware necessary to cover these areas. RFID Journal has gathered data on pilots and deployments that have already been done, and used this information to make assumptions in the calculator: how many handheld readers a store would need based on the number of items in the store; the cost of the hardware; the labor savings that can be achieved; and the likely sales increase. We took averages from the data collected and used fairly conservative assumptions. The calculator is valued at $599, but we announced last week that we will give it away for free to all attendees of our RFID in Fashion event, being held Aug. 12-13 in New York (see RFID Journal to Give Away New Retail ROI Calculator at RFID in Fashion 2009). The calculator comes with a 5,000-word report that addresses retailers' concerns about adopting RFID technology in their stores, and details how—and why—the calculator works. Login and post your comment!Not a member? Signup for an account now to access all of the features of RFIDJournal.com! |
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