Lord & Taylor faced an all-too-common retail problem:
You can’t sell what you don’t display. Keeping the display
floor properly stocked was particularly challenging in the
shoe department of its flagship Fifth Avenue store in New
York. Although sales associates worked diligently to restock
the floor, they couldn’t keep up with the daily retail activity.
As a result, dozens of display samples went missing and the
retailer lost out on opportunities for sales.
The problem lay in the bar-code system the retailer was
using to manage its shoe displays. Among other things, the
bar code line-of-sight requirement meant associates had
to physically touch every shoe to read its bar code, making
inventory a slow and labor-intensive process.
“We carry a tremendous number of sizes and styles in
a wide range of colors. We had to pick up every shoe on
the floor, turn it so the bar code could be seen, scan it,
and upload the data into inventory,” said Rosemary Ryan,
Lord & Taylor’s regional operations director, in a prepared
statement. “It took two to four people, all working about
six to eight hours, just to do a complete scan.” As a result,
associates were only able to conduct a complete display
inventory once a week.
Lord & Taylor’s business team began looking for an alternative solution for managing inventory and quickly homed
in on radio-frequency identification (RFID). It started meeting with RFID vendors, eventually selecting Zebra for a one-day proof-of-concept test followed by a larger-scale pilot.
To prepare for the pilot, associates placed an EPC Gen
2 passive ultra-high-frequency RFID tag directly on each
pair of shoes on the sales floor. The RFID tags were then
“associated” with the UPC bar codes from the retailer’s data
files, providing full information on the vendor, color, price,
and so on.
For the pilot, shoe department associates used Zebra’s
MC3190-Z RFID handheld readers to wirelessly collect
information from the display shoes’ RFID tags, creating
a baseline inventory record. As new shoe styles arrived, a
pair of each style and color was removed from inventory to
be sampled, tagged, and commissioned for display before
being placed on the floor.
Each day before the store opened, one or two associates
walked the floor with the handheld readers to inventory
the shoes. Once the inventory was complete, a “missing
sample” report was printed to identify all shoes missing
from the sales floor. Associates were then able to locate and
replace missing samples.
The pilot quickly demonstrated to Lord & Taylor the
benefits of using RFID for inventory management. A scan
of the display floor, which could take a full workday to
accomplish before RFID, could now be done by one or
two people in about 60 minutes, resulting in a 75-percent
labor savings. In addition, by using RFID, the retailer’s shoe
department could maintain daily display sample accuracy
of at least 95 percent.
The tailored reporting enabled by Zebra’s RFID software
solution platform was also a big time saver. Previously,
data collected via the bar-code scans had to be sent to the
data center for processing. The reports then took a full day
to get back to the department. In addition, the old reports
required that associates manually determine which shoes
were missing from the floor. Now, reports can be generated
from a PC in the department, so they are immediately available, and show exactly what is missing from the sales floor.
As a result of its success with the RFID system in New
York City, Lord & Taylor has rolled out the solution to
all 48 of its stores within the United States. It has also
begun a pilot rollout at Hudson’s Bay, its sister store in
Canada.
When the bar-code system it was using to manage shoe inventories could no longer keep up,
Lord & Taylor went in search of a new solution. It found what it needed in RFID.
Sole partnership
positions as well as the weight of numerous freezer units,
the insulated panels, and the structure’s outside walls. Steel
King’s SK3000 pallet rack, a rugged bolted rack with structural channel columns, was chosen for the job.
Built on a slab right beside the bakery’s existing freezer
storage area, the new rack-supported structure was finished
and ready to use within eight weeks, in time for the startup
of the company’s new production line. Once the new struc-
ture was finished, a hole was cut in the wall of the existing
freezer area to create a pass-through for lift trucks to enter
the new freezer space.
As for how the new structure is working out, the bakery
considers it a winner. “Since we implemented our Steel
King rack-supported pushback rack structure, we have
enough frozen storage capacity to run a product line for an
entire day,” said Vieira in the release. “The rack-supported
option was easier and much more cost-effective than having
to … erect a new building and install new rack inside.”
