River Island

Transcript

Jon Wright: In the world of omnichannel, product availability is king. So if you have the right product and you have the right location of a store, for example, and you have customers coming in to browse and shop your store, the failure point is where they are ready to buy a product in the size that they want, and we don’t have that available. Not winning at that moment is a real issue for retailers. So, it is absolutely crucial to have that product availability and stock accuracy to a high level.

It’s phenomenal and there’s no other technology out there that’s going to give you the ability to do that

Jon Wright – Head of Global Loss Prevention & Safety

We are way ahead of the game in our journey with RFID. A lot further afield than most retailers in our space. Which is really exciting for River Island. Before setting out on this project, we did some internal analysis of what our stock accuracy position was. During the trial, the average accuracy increased to 97 per cent. But at each phase of the trial, after that completed, we removed RFID. And that was to show that any increases that we saw when we removed RFID quickly deteriorated to the same level it was before the trial. It’s phenomenal and there’s no other technology out there that’s going to give you the ability to do that.

So the long term vision of what RFID can do on the basis of solid stock accuracy is to be the omnichannel enabler. The customer’s mindset that now has changed so much, from accepting having to wait for products, into one where they want any product, anytime, anywhere. So, if a customer goes on to our mobile app, identifies the product they want, and wants to be able to pick that product up from her local store, maybe a mile away. We should be able to tell her the product is available and you can go and collect it within half an hour. It’s the seamless service up and down the supply chain in and out from the customer.

The first and foremost reason we chose Nedap was that brand fit because this is not just a quick relationship. This is just the first part of a long journey that we’re going on and that cultural fit has to play an important part.

It’s a one-button operation, it’s super simple, it’s very lightweight, you can get up and running in a matter of weeks

Jon Wright – Head of Global Loss Prevention & Safety

And then in terms of the solution itself, it’s a super simple solution with very minimal IT impact or involvement and absolutely zero IT integration. It’s a cloud-based solution about getting the handles into the stores, getting the staff trained in the handheld device that our store teams use. It’s a one-button operation, it’s super simple, it’s very lightweight, you can get up and running in a matter of weeks.

With RFID there are a million and one applications that you can do. The real objective is just to choose one that’s going to give you your biggest return on investment in the quickest possible time. And that, for us and for most retailers in our space, is just about getting a stock accuracy right. That will pay for the entire rollout, and anything else we choose to do, later on, is just an added bonus.