Fashion footwear driving the growth of RFID

Retailers are rapidly deploying systems that support item-level RFID tagging of clothing and footwear, according to a report from ABI Research published earlier this month.

The radio frequency identification systems "allow retailers to dress better get a handle on inventory, [thus] reducing costs and prevent out-of-stock situations that cause loss of sales," said ABI analyst Bill Arnold in a statement.

"The growth of item-level tagging has enormous detail both in shipments total expenditure. The average growth rate is close to 60% for the next three years, "he said.

Major retailers like Macy 's, J.C. Penney and Wal-Mart are leading the way RFID item-level, which is capable of producing an ROI in three to six months, said the market research report by ABI.

The remaining challenge is to get executive approval to invest in technology. "The State of the global economy is still creating serious delays in getting the money earmarked for RFID, retail," Arnold said. "Leaders are still very concerned about the conditions of business and credit availability, and while the systems-level element tags are technically scalable to small and medium-sized enterprises, credit will be the major limiting factor for small independent shops".

Michael Liard, ABI Research Director, said that the adoption of RFID at the item level "Parallels to barcodes took about 30 years ago. The main difference this time is that are department stores, grocery food, not leading the charge ".

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