Superdry signs up for global RFID roll-out with Nedap

 

Last month, Nedap (Groenlo, The Netherlands) announced that the fashion retailer Superdry has signed up for !D Cloud, Nedap’s RFID software platform. This is an important step in the retailer’s omnichannel strategy, with the objective to increase inventory accuracy and align online and physical store sales. The RFID deployment involves more than 200 stores across the globe, with initial focus on the UK, European and US markets.

Superdry started investigating RFID a few years ago with the ambition of increasing inventory accuracy. This ultimately would lead to better customer experiences in store and online, as the right product would always be available at the right time.

Making inventory information visible through the use of RFID in an intuitive and simple to use technology is a key reason why Superdry are to signing up with Nedap’s !D Cloud. “We have a strong belief in RFID as a core technology and we are convinced this will be a fundamental building block of our strategic direction moving forward,” says James Eastwood, implementation manager at Superdry. “In order to best manage our customer offering it is critical that we have an accurate view of store inventory. This allows us to maximise sales floor availability and presents a number of other great omni-channel opportunities. We can only achieve this by using state-of-the-art technology, which should be easy and intuitive to use by our store staff. Nedap’s !D Cloud solution gives us the foundation to achieve our strategic goals and also benefit from other RFID use cases throughout our supply chain.”

“We are extremely excited to announce that Superdry is continuing their RFID journey with Nedap,” says Nick Markwell, Business Lead !D Cloud UK at Nedap. “We have a great cultural fit with Superdry and both of our businesses are aligned on the current and future use of RFID. With our depth of in-house RFID experts and continued commitment to innovation, we look forward being Superdry’s long term RFID partner and supporting them in achieving their strategic goals.”

Before deploying Nedap’s !D Cloud solution, Superdry was facing a significant financial investment in physical shielding of stock rooms. This was necessary to complete the refill of products from the stock room to the sales floor. During the pilot phase of the RFID project, physical shielding in the form of metallic paint was used. This still led to significant bleed, forcing store staff to reduce the read power on the handheld device. “We couldn’t increase the read power of the handheld any further, as this would lead to unwanted detection of items beyond the walls. On 30% read power it took us two and a half hours to count the entire store, while the same count using Nedap’s Virtual Shielding (patent pending) takes 25 minutes, without the need to physically shield our store,” Eastwood says.

Superdry has started the rollout process and is scheduled to be finished by October 2019 using Nedap’s self-deployment methodology. This methodology enables Superdry to deploy at a fast pace, using existing in-house training and roll out infrastructure and fits with the retailer’s ambitions to master the technology.

Caption: Superdry trusts in Nedap’s RFID technology for its stores (photo: Nedap)