With family members and close friends dispersed up and down the east coast, from Maine to Florida, holiday gift-giving is usually a challenge for me. Especially trying to ensure on-time delivery, and dealing with returns. This year should be easier. Just in time for holiday shopping, 1,800 retailers across the country say they will allow consumers who buy online to arrange pickup at a local bricks ‘n mortar store. Target is even testing an option for paying in one store with pick-up at a different location. This means I can shop online or in a store and choose to have the items shipped directly to the recipient, or arrange for the person receiving the gift pick it up at the store nearest them—a perfect solution for large, heavy gifts such as ski boots.
I’m not alone in welcoming the range of new options being offered by retailers this year. Of consumers polled, 44% want in-store pickup of the merchandise they buy online. And almost two-thirds (62%) of consumers have expressed their desire to buy online and complete a return in-store.
With the months of November and December—the “holiday shopping” season—accounting for 40% of annual sales volume and 25% of yearly profits for most retail operations, store owners are working overtime to meet customer expectations. This will not be easy. Online shopping is escalating at a rapid pace. Already, the growth rate for online sales is seven times greater than for total sales.
Looking at 2012, consumers spent $186 billion shopping online, with E-commerce accounting for 15% of overall retail sales. That’s a lot of inventory to track outside the retail box. Balancing in-store and online inventory is one of the big challenges confronting retailers. How do you offer options like “buy online/pick-up at store” without depleting (or distorting) in-store inventory? How do you order or reorder accurately, and avoid stockroom or shipping errors with merchandise crossing multiple channels?
You can’t satisfy customers—whether E-commerce or bricks ‘n mortar—if what they want is Out-of-Stock, or can’t be located when they are ready to buy. According to Supply Chain Digest, average retail Out-of-Stocks rates run as high as 17.8% industry-wide, and Out-of-Stocks result in a lost sale 42% of the time. In today’s dynamic omni-channel retail space, you can only succeed if all inventory items are visible, in real time, all the time. You need a complete and accurate picture of what’s in the store, what’s available online and what’s in the supply chain.
This is where my needs as a holiday gift-giver, my knowledge of retail operations and my passion for RFID technology converge. When I go online or into a store to shop for my children, my mother, my aunts and uncles and myriad cousins, I know I am creating logistical challenges for the retailer. To fulfill my order, sales staff must locate or relocate a specific item and then replenish that merchandise, all within a short time frame. As a consumer, I don’t want to wait. RFID can help streamline all retail processes relating to inventory management, making every transaction simpler for staff and more satisfying for customers.
Working with RFID and retail for over a decade, I see proof every day that this is a profound technology for retailers. No matter how rapidly merchandise is moving from its source to the final sale, RFID enables a constant, 99+% accurate view of what’s available where, in the precise size, color and style. Even during the holiday shopping frenzy, with RFID in place, your store can become both a perfect showroom and an efficient distribution center for online purchases. Importantly for customer loyalty, your staff can service every request more efficiently.
By keeping holiday inventory management hassle-free for retailers and their staff while keeping consumers satisfied, RFID is playing a significant role in ensuring a positive shopping experience for everyone.