Ed. Note: A version of this article originally appeared at IoP Journal.
Havan Labs, one of the largest retail chains in Brazil, has announced that its operation is now employing radio frequency identification technology on 100 percent of the products it markets, in what it calls one of the fastest RFID projects in the world.
According to Alexsandro Eloi Venancio, a Havan Labs executive, within a span of two years, 500 suppliers inserted millions of tags into products that are now fully identified and tracked by the company, from distribution centers to stores. As a result, Havan—one of the most prestigious retail companies in Brazil, famous for the Statue of Liberty recreation on its façades—can now reduce the level of product it keeps in stock by 30 percent. This allows the retailer to decrease costs and boost the efficiency of its customer service and omnichannel retailing.
At each Havan store, a recreation of New York City’s Statue of Liberty greets customers at the main entrance.
By May of this year, Havan intends to roll out the inventory-control solution to all of its stores. The RFID application was developed by the Havan Labs team, with technology partners selected by the corporation to make life easier for employees and customers alike. “With RFID,” Venancio says, “Havan will facilitate and speed up the search for products in store stocks and streamline inventory counting, thus saving time, optimizing tasks and reducing costs.”
More than 10 years ago, Havan started investigating RFID as a business tool, when tags still carried a high price. The recording and reading equipment it used made it impossible to implement the technology right from the start of its testing. Years later, the company learned about the success story of Brascol, a Brás company in São Paulo, which invested heavily in and was successful with RFID technology from iTAG Etiquetas Inteligentes, enabling it to reduce product theft and gain a return on its merchandise operations.
Alexsandro Venancio
Thus, the Havan team began a new phase of RFID analysis which, with the support of iTAG, determined the advantages and possibilities that the technology provides for companies that have stocks in large volumes, and thus high costs and critical distribution processes. Other suppliers have emerged to provide complementary technologies, such as Haco, Hasar Brasil, Impinj, Prime-Interway, SmartX Tags and Zebra Technologies. At present, Havan has more than 320 RFID readers in place at all of its establishments, as well as printers enabled for this technology, along with antennas and other complementary equipment.
“All tags have RFID, QR codes and barcodes,” Venancio says, though RFID is not always the most economical cost. “It depends on the operation,” he explains, adding that RFID has brought the firm a lot of added value. Havan has also improved its performance in e-commerce, which was not among its priorities before the pandemic, but which was implemented during the past year in an accelerated manner thanks to it now having efficient control of its inventory at the points of reception and distribution.
“Our suppliers send us all their products with RFID tags that already contain QR codes and barcodes,” Venancio states. “In China, suppliers use the labels provided by the local bureau that iTAG opened. As a result, all of our suppliers, even those operating in Asia, can deliver products properly within our requirements.” He says the GS1 standard was implemented to facilitate all of these international and local processes.
Each of Havan’s 155 stores ranges from 5,000 to 6,000 square meters (54,000 to 65,000 square feet) in size, and each now has complete inventory accuracy and can conduct constant high-speed inventory counts. “Our intention now is to expand the usefulness of the technology, including having our suppliers benefit from it,” Venancio says. “The implementation of self-checkouts, which allow customers to make purchases and payments without having to wait in long lines using ATMs, is part of the plan.”
In Venancio’s assessment, Havan was able to achieve important goals through product control using RFID. “Some of the gains can be measured, such as a 30 percent reduction in the value of inventories,” Venancio notes, “but there are other benefits that are intangible, such as easily finding the products that customers have purchased through RFID resources. Thus, making customers happy is a gain that cannot be calculated, and it results in good business for our company.” Watch the full interview (recorded in Portuguese) at IoP Journal Brazil’s YouTube channel.