American Apparel is the first apparel retailer in the United States to fully embrace RFID. The company has deployed the technology in several stores to date, and the data it has collected indicates stores using RFID have seen a 14 percent increase in sales due to better inventory management and improved on-shelf availability, as well as from employees spending more time with customers and less time checking inventory levels (see American Apparel Expands RFID to Additional Stores).
Reik Reid, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co., has estimated that American Apparel will spend approximately $47,000 per store for the RFID equipment and tags, and achieve a return on its investment in four and a half months. Not bad.
Zander Livingston, American Apparel’s director of RFID, is delivering the keynote address at RFID in Fashion 2009, an event we are hosting with the American Apparel & Footwear Association on Aug. 12-13, in New York City (see American Apparel’s Zander Livingston to Keynote at RFID in Fashion 2009). But if you’d like a sneak peak at the deployments, check out this video, created by Avery Dennison, which supplied the tags for the project. The video explains how RFID is being used, as well as the benefits the technology is delivering.
