Key Takeaways
- ClarityRFID has restructured its licensing and deployment models since its acquisition by Constellation Software, and CEO Michael Quimby said most deployments now take weeks, not months.
- The company now tracks retail inventory from the factory to the distribution center to purchase on a single data model and works with all tag manufacturers and multiple hardware vendors.
ClarityRFID entered 2026 as a new kind of company. Once the intelligent inventory software division of SML, the business was spun off, put through a global sale process and acquired by Constellation Software, the Canadian public software company with roughly $40 billion in market cap. Now operating as an independent, retail-focused RFID software company, ClarityRFID has spent the past year rebuilding how it prices, deploys and supports its technology.
We sat down with CEO Michael Quimby and COO Cailee Rye to talk about the repositioning and what comes next.
RFID Journal: Let’s start with the origin story. How did ClarityRFID become an independent company?
Quimby: We started as SML’s intelligent inventory solutions software division. That division was spun off as part of a broader refinancing and recapitalization plan. SML wanted to pursue pure-play manufacturer partners, and separating the software business supported that. A global bidding process followed, and Constellation Software won. They’re a public company out of Canada, about $40 billion in market cap and roughly $12 billion in revenue. Their philosophy borrows from Warren Buffett: buy something good, improve it and hold it forever. We now sit inside a Constellation operating unit organized around retail.
RFID Journal: How did you and Cailee come together to lead the business through it?
Quimby: I came in from the outside to run the business, make a good solution as good as possible and unlock growth. Cailee was already part of Constellation and joined me on the operations side. We’ve spent the year figuring out what worked, what didn’t and improving almost everything about how we operate.
RFID Journal: What’s changed most since the acquisition? Walk us through the areas where customers would notice the biggest difference.
Quimby: Pricing and deployment. We had some antiquated licensing models and deployment approaches that were very expensive in the first year. We turned that completely upside down. We’re now one of the more aggressively priced solutions in the market, because we’ve gotten efficient in how we deliver and scale. I don’t think the financial condition of the company or its horizons have ever been brighter.
How Does ClarityRFID Track Retail Inventory From Factory to Store?
RFID Journal: Where does ClarityRFID create the most value for a retailer? What do you consider the best thing you do that sets you apart?
Quimby: Two things stand out. First, we have probably the deepest and most expansive set of workflow capabilities for item-level inventory management in a store, and we scale that from tens of stores to thousands. Those workflows were designed by retailers for retailers. Second, and this is highly differentiated, we now bring the full factory-to-store life cycle into one picture.
RFID Journal: Can we dig deeper into factory-to-store visibility—what does it actually let a retailer see that they couldn’t before?
Quimby: We consolidated two product offerings that used to be separate. They’re on a single data model architecture now. So I can see a piece of inventory come off the factory, move into a distribution center and track it through purchase. That’s full life cycle visibility, and few others do it on a single data model. A lot of our retail partners run us in both stores and supply chain, and they’re excited to tie those together to improve efficiencies and grow the top line.
RFID Journal: During this discussion, you have repeatedly circle back to the employees when you describe the company. Why does the team matter so much to how customers experience ClarityRFID?
Rye: Most of our staff come from a retail-heavy background. They’ve built real relationships with our customers, and they serve as consultants, a lot of it for free, as part of managing the account. Customers listen to us because they trust us. So it’s not just the software. We have really good people and a strong customer success life cycle. Our customers will sit and talk with us for hours.
Quimby: That knowledge shows up in speed too. Most of our current deployments happen in weeks, not months.
How Are Open Partnerships and AI Shaping ClarityRFID’s RFID Roadmap?
RFID Journal: Your roadmap touches tag costs, read accuracy, edge computing and software. Start with partners. What changed on that front once you became independent?
Quimby: As an independent company, we took an open partner ecosystem approach. We’re no longer exclusive to SML on tags. We work with all tag manufacturers. On hardware, we were historically exclusive to Zebra. We now support Urovo, we’re far along with Bluebird and select TSC units and we’re in deep discussions on the supply chain side. We recently entered a partnership with Levata and SML for a wide range of supply chain offerings. The goal is to give customers a variety of price points and solutions across the factory-to-store continuum.
RFID Journal: Where does AI fit in? Give us a sense of how deeply it’s woven into the way you build and run the business.
Quimby: Everywhere. AI runs through our entire software development life cycle, from gathering customer requirements to estimating epics and stories and turning them into working features at record speed. The quality is probably higher than we’ve ever delivered. Every employee has a Claude license, which is our platform of choice, and people who prefer ChatGPT have that too. On the engineering side we use a combination of Codex and Claude, so each can check the other’s work.
It shows up in operations as well. We reviewed our ideal customer profile, reassessed our total addressable market and rebuilt our pricing and packaging. That work used to require sales operations and deal desk hires. With Claude, it took days.
RFID Journal: What about edge computing and analytics? How are those pieces coming together for customers today?
Quimby: Edge supports a fuller loss prevention story that’s live and being used. A lot of it comes from the fixed reader infrastructure customers pair with handheld devices. That gives us insight into what’s being purchased, what’s walking out the door and where the variance is. On analytics, we want to ingest our customers’ models and build an optimized menu of options. A retailer can ask us to optimize a workflow or maximize profitability around replenishment, and we bring years of store-level inventory data plus variables like weather and climate. It’s personalized to what they want to optimize.
RFID Journal: Tariffs and AI were the two big forces for businesses this past year. How did you navigate the tariff side, and where did it hit your business the hardest?
Quimby: Tariffs show up in our hardware partnerships. We’ve seen multiple price increases coming from hardware vendors and price premiums from some European supply chain partners. One advantage is that SML manufactures in the U.S., which helps. We’re helping customers buy in a more educated fashion when we sell software configured on hardware, making them aware of what’s coming so they can maximize the value they receive.
What’s Driving Retail RFID Demand in Stores and Supply Chains?
RFID Journal: Cailee, operations was a heavy lift this year. Walk us through it, and tell us where things stood when you first joined.
Rye: When we joined last year, there were a lot of efficiencies to make and a lot of processes to build to prepare for SOC 1, SOC 2 and ISO. We’re in such a good place now that our initial auditor came in and said he was incredibly impressed and hadn’t seen a program rate this well in a long time. We’ve come a long way, and that’s been my favorite part, alongside going on customer site visits with Michael, getting into the DCs and seeing how customers actually do things.
RFID Journal: Where is demand strongest right now? Help paint a picture for us of who’s coming to you and how far along they tend to be.
Quimby: Both distribution and stores. A lot of retailers are still getting started. Some haven’t tagged anything. Others tagged only because a mandate, like digital product passport requirements, forced it. We meet them with flexible starting points, whether that’s the distribution center or the store, and help them launch.
RFID Journal: You launched free proof-of-concept programs. How do those work?
Quimby: These are big, capital-intensive programs, and customers want to see the technology before they buy. So we bring the devices, Zebra, Urovo, whatever models a partner wants to look at, along with tag partners and our software. I can stand a customer up in a store or two in a matter of days, and they see the business impact for themselves. That’s the kind of company we want to be: try it before you buy it. It builds trust and it accelerates value.
RFID Journal: We all know of the pressures pushing retailers and suppliers. What’s driving supply chain demand and what solutions are you offering?
Quimby: Large retailers have invested in inbound and outbound hardware, and they’re scrutinizing the inbound process: you told me you’d ship this, but here’s what I got. In the U.S., the penalties for inaccuracy are severe, and for many customers those penalties fund the entire program. Suppliers feel the same pressure. They do business with Nordstrom, Dillard’s, Walmart, and they want to fight penalties, so they put a tunnel on their outbound to prove they shipped exactly what they committed to. We try to play Switzerland and provide solutions for both sides.
What’s Next for ClarityRFID in Retail, Grocery and Beyond?
RFID Journal: What was the toughest internal problem to solve? Point us to the area that needed the most work to bring up to standard.
Quimby: Our software development was always solid and high quality. The tooling to run the business was not as mature. How we track contracts, pricing, customer support and SLAs matters, and we needed to record, monitor and, where possible, automate it for accuracy and speed. We’ve used AI and automations to handle governance, controls and evidence gathering. That’s made big differences internally, and it shows up for customers in things like our help desk tooling.
RFID Journal: Cailee, how would you describe your approach to building the product? What guides the decisions you make about what to build next?
Rye: We build for what our customers actually have in place, not for what we imagine or guess they might need. We listen to them and solve the problems they’re facing right now. We watch the industry to innovate as well as run experiments with our customers to bring new ideas to life. Our primary focus though is to really listen to our customers and build for them. That’s been the exciting part to tackle.
RFID Journal: Looking ahead, what’s the biggest opportunity, and the biggest risk? Tell us where you see the company stretching itself over the next year or two.
Quimby: Some competitors want to be all things RFID across every vertical. That’s not who we are. We’re focused on retail, and the segments adopting RFID keep expanding. It started with apparel and shoes and now reaches home goods, sporting goods and baby clothing. We have operating entities and customers around the globe, and markets we haven’t touched yet. Scaling that will keep us busy over the next 12 to 18 months, mostly around store, supply chain and loss prevention.
The longer-term opportunity, more than a risk, is adjacent markets. Advancements in RFID tagging open up perishables and grocery. Those are different workflows, but our underlying technology framework carries over, and we already serve large grocery chains. How fast we move depends on how fast AI lets us. Is that next year? Two years? We’ll see.
RFID Journal: Final question, Michael. Favorite part of the year, and what made it stand out for you?
Quimby: Getting out to meet customers and seeing how they deploy our technology and the value they create. The impact we can have is substantial. I won’t tell you it’s all rainbows and butterflies. There are things we can do better, and we know we have more to go. But we’re on a really good track.