Report: American Apparel ditches handheld readers in favor of RFID

Los Angeles – American Apparel is automating in-store inventory tracking processes with a wide-area RFID, eliminating the need for handheld readers. As reported by RFID 24-7, following a six-month pilot, American Apparel has deployed an automated inventory system using fixed RFID antennae mounted in ceiling track lights at all locations in North America.



The solution uses Seintron inventory visibility technology and Impinj Speedway readers, antenna hubs and GrandPrix RFID platform. On a continual basis, the system transmits data from RFID inventory tags with Impinj Monza chips to a database providing real-time RFID coverage across the store. Ninety-eight percent of items in the store are tagged.



Reported benefits from the use of RFID to automate in-store inventory management include improvements in inventory accuracy, on-shelf availability, security, and the ability to locate merchandise. In addition, combining inventory visibility with POS data American Apparel can improve analytics of its merchandising performance and elimination of previously manual cycle counts provides store associates and managers with more time to perform customer-facing tasks.