Portuguese store applies RFID to increase customer shopping pleasure

Fly London, a high-end shoe and accessories Store on Avenida da Liberdade in Lisbon, Portugal, can provide customers with better services, not just limited to trying on shoes. Thanks to RFID technology, customers can try on the shoes and see themselves wearing them on a camera projection opposite. However, the image will not only show the customer putting on the shoes, but will also show different backgrounds depending on the style of the shoes, such as a Tokyo, London or New York street scene.

Ana Gomes, general manager of stores for clothing brand Foreva and Fly London (owned by Portuguese footwear company Kyaia), said the goal is to make customers have fun while shopping. She explains that shopping at Fly London’s Lisbon store is no longer just a simple purchase, it has transformed into a special and interesting experience for our customers.

Although in-store interaction is the most eye-catching feature of a store's RFID deployment, the primary function of an RFID system is supply chain management, ensuring that store managers know what inventory is in stock at any given time, what items are being sold in the store, and Use the RFID data to show what items have been sold and what items the store needs to order again. The entire solution was developed and installed by Creativesystems. The system is part of the Shoe ID project, led by Creativesystems and also participated by the Research and Development Institute Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores do Porto (INESC Porto), assisting shoe stores and manufacturers. Manufacturers design optimization algorithms for supply chain and production scheduling software.

Initially, the Fly London store used the system to track inventory, including when the goods left the manufacturer, when they arrived at the 60-square-meter store, whether they were sold on the store floor and when they were sold.

The shoes sold in the store are made in a Portuguese factory run by the company Kyaia. Once a shoe is manufactured, factory workers attach a tag to the shoe that contains Avery Dennison's EPC Gen 2 passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) RFID Inlay, whose unique ID number is stored in the Creativesystems software platform. (CS.Retail) is connected to the product’s stock keeping unit (SKU), style and size information. All shoes shipped to the Lisbon store are labeled.

Goods are shipped from the manufacturer to the Fly London store, where store staff then use a handheld ATID RFID Reader to obtain the unique ID number of the shoe tag, directly from the enclosed shoe box. The handheld devices use a Wi-Fi connection to forward ID numbers to the CS.Retail software, indicating what items have been received, thereby maintaining an inventory record of the store's inventory. The software integrates with the Fly London store's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to manage inventory tracking and orders.

When a pair of shoes is placed in the store, the fixed reader/writer of Alien Technology installed on the ceiling reads the ID number of the RFID tag and sends it to the CS.Retail software, so that store staff can know which shoes are at any time. Item is for sale.

The store has an interactive floor measuring 6 meters by 2 meters, with an Alien ALR9900+ RFID reader and built-in antenna. This floor was developed by Surfaceslab, a manufacturer of RFID door fixtures.

When a customer puts on tagged shoes on the interactive floor, as soon as the shoes come into contact with the floor of the interactive floor, the antenna will obtain the unique ID number of the shoe tag. The antenna sends the information via a cable connection to the store's back-end system, where the CS.Retail software receives the ID number. The software then determines which of three backgrounds, London, New York or Tokyo, to display based on the style of the shoe. The software instructs the video system (built into the interactive floor and connected to cameras and flat screens) to project an appropriate city street scene and images of customers trying on shoes.

At the point of sale, the staff enters the CS.Retail software and can see that a certain labeled product has been purchased. Creativesystems also installed an Alien reader in the doorway so that the tag can be used in an electronic article surveillance (EAS) system, which will sound an alarm if shoes are taken out without purchase. Otherwise, no alarm will sound.

"So far, about 2,000 pairs of shoes have been tagged," Gomes said. "Externally, we are getting feedback that customers are having fun. Internally, we are managing the store in a more efficient and faster way. We are It is now possible to take stock counts many times faster and to simply control all internal stock transfers.”