Checkpoint Systems has announced an "out-of-the-box" Handheld Visibility Solution for closed-loop apparel retailers and department stores.
Apparel retailers face a variety of challenges that impact sales and margins daily, including global apparel out-of-stocks averaging eight percent or more, perpetual inventory that is inaccurate 35-65 percent of the time, and reduced sales due to out-of-stocks.
RFID solutions, such as Checkpoint's Merchandise Visibility Solution, can help retailers reduce out-of-stocks while increasing sales and maximizing shelf availability — and many apparel retailers are looking for cost-effective ways to start achieving these benefits and deploy globally in a low-risk way, according to the company.
"We created Checkpoint's Handheld Visibility Solution for apparel retailers that want to prove the value of merchandise visibility to reduce out-of-stocks and increase sales," noted Per Levin, Checkpoint Systems' worldwide president, merchandise visibility. "This solution is designed as an ideal first step for retailers that want to work with a partner that has the capabilities to implement a global rollout, including source tagging, in-store deployment and support, hardware and software."
"In this initial phase to help prove the value of RFID, the solution can be deployed without impacting retailers' IT systems or networks, and it also minimizes the impact on store operations, resulting in rapid time-to-productivity," said Prasad Putta, Checkpoint Systems' executive vice president, merchandise visibility.
The Handheld Solution is designed to quickly, easily and reliably enable store receiving, inventory counting and tracking of items sold, among other store-based processes. Based on RFID technology, it affords retailers the ability to track inventory at the item level both in the back room and on the sales floor, helping to improve inventory accuracy, reduce out-of-stocks, improve replenishment, increase store efficiency and increase sales, all key metrics to help justify a full Merchandise Visibility implementation.
The Handheld Visibility Solution is easily configured to each retailer's unique needs, and typically includes:
- Handheld RFID reader
- Laptop computer
- RFID software
- RFID tags (hard tags and labels)
- Service and support
It also includes the methodology to help retailers develop the business case to prove the ROI to senior management and develop the implementation roadmap to enable a phased global deployment. Checkpoint is a supplier of shrink management, merchandise visibility and apparel labeling solutions for the retail industry.
