Levi’s uses RFID in 3,000 stores worldwide

Levi Strauss invented the first jeans as overalls for cowboys, prospectors and farmers in the San Francisco area in the late 19th century. Since then, sturdy and durable cargo pants made of denim have taken the world by storm. Today, Levi's is once again leading the way in the application of RFID technology. With the joint efforts of Avery Dennison and its partners, Levi's plans to equip all 3,000 Stores around the world with UHF RFID tags by 2021 to achieve efficient Store inventory management.

Customer pain points

Store inventory is difficult to match customer demand

Take Levi's jeans products as an example. Different cuts, colors, washes, lengths and sizes create a large number of single product models. Typically, there are about 120 options for women's jeans, and more than 80 for men. Under traditional methods, the efficiency and accuracy of inventory counting have reached a bottleneck. This has led to some common problems in stores: customers often cannot find the ideal style in the current store, or the store's replenishment mechanism is not triggered in time after the product is out of stock.

RFID decodes Retail Industry bottlenecks

Achieve over 98% inventory accuracy in 20 minutes

Levi’s has been exploring the use of RFID technology to meet a series of challenges faced by stores since 2016. After sufficient testing and evaluation, Levi’s began a plan to promote RFID to its global stores in 2018.

Currently, all Levi’s U.S. stores have applied RFID, with a total of 50 million items. The promotion and popularization of European stores is also proceeding at full speed, and soon, the implementation project of Asian stores will also be launched. Levi’s plans to promote RFID technology to more than 3,000 stores in its three largest markets in the world - North America, Europe and Asia by the end of 2021.

More than 50 million Levi's items have been tagged with RFID

Avery Dennison provided all precoded tags for Levi’s RFID project, giving each item a unique digital identity starting from the production end. Through RFID technology, the inventory count time of the entire store is shortened to less than 20 minutes, allowing the store to complete two complete inventory counts every day, and the average inventory accuracy rate exceeds 98%.

RFID tags shorten inventory counting to 20 minutes and can be completed twice a day

RFID helps achieve sales growth

Through RFID technology, Levi's can better sell the desired products to its customers and achieve sales. Mr. Stefan Otte, Vice President of Levi's Global Commercial Real Estate and Partner Retail, said in a recent interview: "Nearly 100% inventory accuracy helps tap new sales potential. For stores that have already applied RFID, their average performance growth has reached 5%. More importantly, RFID implementation can integrate more functions such as omni-channel shopping and Library-self-service-borrowing-and-returning-machine-source-manufacturer-UHF-touch-screen-borrowing-and-returning-machine.html target='_blank'>self-service terminals.”

If a product is indeed not sold in the store or is out of stock, the store staff can recommend similar styles to customers through the tablet, or transfer goods to other stores and deliver them directly to the current store or even the customer's home.

Interaction with customers can be completed simply through a tablet

Retail without RFID will have no future

Mr. Otte said: “RFID technology is becoming the standard. In the trade of goods, customers and products should be the focus. The implementation of RFID technology drives this goal. Employees will become digital shopping experts, better able to recommend their products to customers. Products that you haven’t had the opportunity to touch in person yet. Retail without RFID will have no future.”