America Today selects Nedap’s RFID solution

19 Feb 2019

First RFID rollout on the Dutch retail market

Fashion retailer America Today, part of Coolinvestments, has decided to implement Nedap’s !D Cloud RFID software at its 69 stores in the Benelux countries to structurally raise stock accuracy and, as a result, guarantee product availability. The rollout is planned for the second half of 2019.

Looking for the business case
In the autumn of 2018, America Today started a pilot together with Nedap in 3 stores, to investigate whether there was actually sufficient basis for a business case. During the course of the pilot, a weekly stock count was performed using the !D Cloud software and a RFID handheld reader, which resulted in an improvement in stock accuracy from 75% on average to 98%.

Jonathan Kahn, CFO of America Today, explains: “We realised that our stock accuracy was going to be a huge bottleneck for our omnichannel ambitions. That is why we started investigating, together with Nedap, whether we had a business case, and it turned out that we actually had one. We opted to follow the GS1 standards, so as to offer the cooperation with all our Supply Chain partners more opportunities in the future. We are fully convinced that RFID will be a great help to us in gaining more insight into and control of our stock.”

Arjan Pruiksma, Business Developer at Nedap Retail, adds: “We are very pleased that America Today has become the first clothing retailer in the Netherlands to implement RFID with Nedap. Similarly to other retailers, America Today does not have reliable stock data, which prevents it from truly integrating its stores and online channels. We are really looking forward to starting this RFID journey together.”

Stock accuracy with RFID
Nedap’s !D Cloud software suite is a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution which was especially developed for the retail sector. The software provides insight into stock levels and the exact location of each item. This also provides the basis for omnichannel concepts such as Click & Collect and Ship-from-Store. Kahn: “Our biggest driver is omnichannel, but a technology like RFID really tempts you to do everything at once. We opted to place our initial focus on maximising results with the lowest possible level of complexity. The first results are very promising, and the stores are enthusiastic as well. We cannot wait to get started.”