Low Tag Costs And High Benefits Drive Interest In RFID For Loss Prevention

The price of RFID tags has dropped as much as 40 percent over the past 18 months, bringing the per tag price down to roughly 7 to 12 cents each or less, based on volumes and tag specifications. RFID hardware costs have also dropped over 30 percent within the last two years. At the same time, retailers are discovering the exceptional power of RFID to curtail retail theft and fraud.  According to Zander Livingston, CEO of Truecount Corporation, with lower costs and ease of integration with legacy systems, now is the time for retailers to deploy RFID for strategic loss control.

“Working alone or integrated into other EAS systems, RFID delivers the most comprehensive intelligence about lost or stolen merchandise possible today,” says Livingston. “Retailers have a high-definition view of all inventory and inventory movements with complete data, not only quantities, but also style, color, SKU numbers and price. With accountability on every item from RFID tagging, retailers are experiencing significant declines in shoplifting and internal theft as well as fraud and processing errors.”

Speaking from the retailer’s perspective, Ryan Gebauer, vice president Retail Risk Services for SilverStone Group says, “RFID technology can address all three shrink factors ---internal-external theft and paperwork accounting errors--- simultaneously while also providing support to other critical business insights such as inventory management.”

By recapturing these lost revenues, most retailers are experiencing ROI within one year or less. Still, when building a business case for RFID pilots, most retailers begin with the unprecedented counting speed and near perfect inventory accuracy of RFID technology. 

Livingston is working to shift more focus to RFID’s loss control capabilities. His company, Truecount, is partnered with manufacturer Jamison RFID to showcase the simplicity and potency of combining RFID with other cutting edge technologies to obtain maximum effectiveness in loss prevention.  Jamison is the world’s largest provider of RFID hardware solutions, and will be demonstrating its new Hawk model in tandem with Truecount RFID at the upcoming RILA Asset Protection Conference April 28 – May 1, 2013 in Orlando.

According to Tim Buckley, Director of Jamison RFID, the Hawk is a compact, light-weight wall-mount unit that reads RFID tags. “The Hawk unit is the perfect plug 'n play hardware solution for retail applications,” says Buckley. “Simply plug into your Ethernet and start reading RFID tags. Together with Truecount’s Essentials, the Hawk presents a simple, fast, affordable and extremely efficient way to deploy RFID.” “While it is not yet possible to completely eliminate every possibility for theft, fraud and loss,” Buckley adds, “retailers today have access to the most precise tools ever available for mitigating those events.”

Both Livingston and Buckley agree that as lower tag prices converge with leading edge developments in   RFID solutions, pedestals and other components, retailers should not wait to launch an RFID pilot for loss control.  “RFID immediately impacts the bottom line,” says Livingston. “It enables store owners to see loss as it happens, thus allowing immediate loss prevention deployment of resources as needed vs. traditional end of year inventory as well elimination of labor expense from cycle counting throughout the year.

Truecount, and Jamison will be demonstrating the Hawk and Truecount solutions at Booth #631, 2013 RILA Asset Protection Conference, Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Orlando.  For more information, visit www.truecount.com.