Join Mike Graen for Part 1 of his conversation as he discusses the future of RFID at Retail with Elena Verplanck from the Nedap company, including best practice use cases for leveraging RFID to know what you have and where it is.

Greetings. My name is Mike Graen. Welcome to

another University of Arkansas Supply Chain Management Research

Council. Today we are joined by Elena from Nedap. She is a

Operations Manager director inside of Nedap. She spends a

lot of time working with retailers on RFID

implementations and is really successful at trying to explain

some of the best practices to make RFID work inside a retail

organization. Let's join our podcast in progress. Oh, good

morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you might be

this fine day today. It's one o'clock central time, on Good

Friday. And I've got the pleasure of having Elena from

Nedap to join us. We're laughing a little bit ago because I told

her that we wanted to jump on the call, but 15 minutes early.

And I gave her a time of why don't we go ahead and jump out

at 12:45. And she said, "Why would I drop jump on an hour and

15 minutes early?" I forgot she was on the east coast. So Elena,

with Nedap, would you please unmute just kind of introduce

yourself to our audience.

So I've been with Nedap for just four years

now a couple weeks ago. I started here as the operations

manager on the EAS side. And a couple of years ago, took on the

software side, though the inventory management group

rolled under me. So it's been I've been able to hit both sides

of our house. So really exciting. And, you know, it's

been, it's been really like the best place to work, I have to

say, really unusual place. So neat app is a global company.

We're headquartered out of the Netherlands, and we're a

technology company with a few different business units. That

all focus on. We like to say technology for life, making

people's lives better. And like I said, I'm in the retail space.

So for us, it's the EAS side as well as inventory management.

And yeah, it's just it's a really special, really special

company, really different organization than your typical

us or North American company. So it's been a great experience and

have really loved it.

The company is located in the Netherlands.

You're you're located on the east coast, right? The Boston

area?

Yeah. So we're, so we're global. So we have

offices all over the globe. I'm located in Boston, at our

Boston, US headquarters, and like, yeah, we're located. The

actual HQ is in the Netherlands. It's in. We actually just had

the CEO here yesterday, and he was practicing with me how to

say I say hello, but it's you're supposed to roll that GNR and

their data at it, but they're located a few hours from

Amsterdam, so.

So did you learn how to do it, do you want to give us

a demonstration in front of everybody? And he will probably

see this podcast and see how much you learned.

Well my boss is probably like, come on, you can

say it. It's Groenlo, you have to like oh, and I just can't do

that throaty thing thing, but but that's okay. They they let

me they let me take a path. And he when I said, I said oh, I'm

coming to Groenlo next week, and he was like, "where?" And I was

like, Oh, Groenlo. And he's like, ah, and then yesterday,

all day, he was like, "Where are you going?" And I'm like, Okay,

let's try it again. So anyway.

He will greet you at the door and say, "Where are you

now?"

Exactly. That's exactly what he'll do. That's

exact, actually, he probably really will do that, which is

another one of those things that makes it a really special

company.

That's awesome. That's awesome. That's terrific.

It's a great place.

You know, we make some fun and sometimes and I

know this is not part of the podcast, but you know, people

say you spend a third of your life sleeping, you spend a third

of your life doing you know, spend time with family and

friends, etc. And you spend a third of your time time in your

life working. And so I spend a lot of time with people who are

just miserable at their jobs and I go it's a third of your life.

Go find something that you love to do and get somebody to pay

for it. While I can't leave. You can go go figure out where you

really feel like you're having a lot of fun. And then do that for

work. I think it's a much more rewarding thing.

You know, my father in law we my family owned

my husband's family bought - and mine - but my husband's

family owned a business. A retail store actually. And my

father in law used to say to my kids do something from Money and

you'll, you'll just never be happy. Find something you love.

And you will make money and you will be good at it, and you will

have happiness. And it really, it really stuck with me because

he truly he worked until six months before he died at 86

years old because he truly loved what he did. And the thing about

my coming to Nate app was obviously, you know, I have 20

years or so whatever, have a career before that, and never

worked at any place. That was awful. But just, it was this

place is different. It's a different culture, they talk

about it. And when I interview people, and I try, you know, and

I'm like bringing them on, they're like, well tell me about

the company. And I'm like, it's really special. It's a family.

They care about you. You know, we obviously care about making

money, right? It's a company. But that's not the number one

goal. And it truly is a place where you can, you can you can

do what you love, and everybody's respected and

everybody's equal. It's just, it's a really special

organization that until you get here, you don't get it. And then

once you get here, people look at me go, Oh, now I get it. Now

I get it. And yeah, I've just it's really been it's been a

great four years, and people here have worked here for 25,

30, 40 years. It's just like, Wait, watch. It's fully you, you

You love it. So it's a great organization.

Okay, for all of the attendees, go ahead and send

your resume to www.nedap.com

Honestly, honestly, if you're looking if

you're looking for, for a great place to be Nedap is it. Yeah.

That's, I love it. I love it. So I'm obviously biased. That's

awesome.

That's awesome. Well, let's go ahead and let's

go ahead and transition into our topic. And I really enjoy the

topic of on shelf availability. And the reason I like it is

every one of us are an industry professional focused on on shelf

availability, you happen to be part of a company that I think

provides an incredible platform in software, to be able to

expose on hands and make sure people know what they have and

know where it's located, etc. But here's always the other

interesting thing. We all take our work hat off and we put our

customer hat on and we go shopping, right? And so one of

the questions that I love to ask people, and I've done this for

almost a year now and it's just amazing, some of the stories

because nobody, nobody has a unique story like the person who

was last time, which is Tell me about a time where you as a

customer, not as a business professional, as a customer

wanted to go and get a product that you thought they had in

stock in store, you went to that store and you were disappointed.

I'm sure you have one of those examples.

Well, yeah, like is that I have many. I

actually think this is really funny because this literally

just happened. So um, yes, I am a shopper. But um, so my husband

retired couple years ago. So he's officially become the the

shopper in our house. So basically I'm like, today, can

you can you go to the store? Can you go to the cleaners? Can you

pick up this? Can you pick up that?

And by the way, be careful because I'm looking at

the audience. And if your husband's name is Edward, he's

he's stalking you at work.

Could be! I said to him a couple of weeks

ago, I said, Hey, can you do me a favor? I need you to go to

this particular store. I've checked online I need you to

pick me up lip liner. And so for all of your listeners who

aren't, you know, wearing lip liner, it's very important thing

for some of us. So I said can you do me a favor? Can you go

can you pick it up? And he was like, Oh Lord, like what am I

getting? I said, I'm gonna send you a picture message of the

brand. It's fine. I already checked. They've got it just

buzz-in. It's just right there. Pick it up. So he goes, they

don't have it. He leaves comes home. They don't have it. I'm

like, Oh my god. Okay, fine. So, couple days later, I'm like,

I'll go I'll look. So I go in bed and have it again. So a

couple days later, I said, Oh, hey, can you do me a favor? I

looked. I swear other store. They have it? Just go, please. I

know they have it. Okay. He goes in, they don't have it. He says

to the sales associate. This is a second time in here. Do you

have this? And she's like, Oh, no, we're out of stock. Sorry.

And he's like, okay, and she's like, well, you can you can buy

that since it's the same. So he buys it. He brings it home. I

come home from work. It's sitting on the table. I said

what is this? He said that's the stuff you've asked for. They

didn't have the one you want it but the lady says that's the

same as Okay, two things. Number one, no, this is not the same.

And to like now I'm totally irritated like it's been three

trips and I'm just gonna go online and have it shipped. And

it'll be here when it gets here. And so yes, so that was my

little frustrating thing. And I was and he was funny because

he's like, do they not have the thing that you do? Like, why is

it that I'm like? Like, yes, yes, that is a very good, I need

to call this retailer, actually, I need one of our salespeople to

call this retailer because Ned doesn't want to go through this

ever again. So.

And by the way, we we use that example, oftentimes,

as a real good example, whether it's printer cartridges for your

printer, or hair color, you know, I've got a specific hair

color I'm looking for, lipstick and cosmetics. Cosmetics is a

huge opportunity. They're a little bit more difficult to

tag, but we'll get into some of that later. But bottom line is

That's it. That's an industry that screams for onhand accuracy

and making sure you got the product available for a customer

because customers want sweat. I mean, you're good example. What

is this? This is not what I asked for Go bring it.

Same and I'm like, it is just no, you just

don't get it. This isn't the same. And yeah, and I'm sure she

was the salesperson was like here, just buy this and go away.

And he was more than happy to go away. Let me tell you, but But

honestly, like, I was annoyed I was I was really annoyed. But

you're right. It's a it's a really difficult industry, but

one that could use some help.

Yeah, goes to goes to inventory about lipsticks,

I'm sure. It's a very big problem. Yeah, for sure. Well,

that's a good, that's a good example. That's a good segue

into, okay, why should that particular retailer, implement

RFID? And specifically, the needy app solution? Because I

think you guys tell us a little bit about need app and tell us

kind of what kind of services you provide to the industry.

So I'm particularly on a real sales

solution. So inventory management, really giving the

retailer as well as the customer, right? Because when

you're giving the retailer visibility into their entire

ecosystem, right? You're, you're giving that to the customer as

well. So our solution allows a retailer to understand where

within the ecosystem product is, so that they have the right

stock at the right time. It doesn't help anybody to have,

you know, 100 bathing suits sitting in the backroom in

January or, you know, taking up space, right? Like you don't

need that right now. It's January, like where are coats

like? And do we have the right product available at the right

time. So our solution allows for that our solution? Also, I think

one of the things that makes our solution, really special is the

interface is the ease of ease of use. It's it's an easy solution

for the store associates them, that tends to be a lot of the

feedback that we get from the folks, you know, actually using

the product day to day. So forget leadership, forget

stakeholders, just the, you know, the folks at the store

level and a lot of times, you know, I'm not the person that

obviously goes into the store. It's the sales, folks. But

they'll come back and they'll tell stories of how the

salespeople were like, can we keep this? We don't get it back

today? Do we like, Wait? No. When are we getting it? Because

it doesn't make life really easy. And anybody who's ever I'm

probably very much dating myself. But you know, those

physical inventories were, you know, I worked at the store, it

was called Cherry Web and Train when I was probably like 20. And

they would talk about how amazing and fun. The inventory

was new. We're like going to be in the store all night. It'd be

super cool. And we're going to order pizza. Well buy 1 in the

morning, you're like, This is not cool. This is not fun. And

I'm sick of counting these stupid T shirts. And so our

product just changes that whole landscape makes it easier for

Yeah, every time I've been involved with that

everybody.

I've just about finished that one rack or that one set of

shelves and somebody says excuse me have a question. And I answer

the question. I come back. Where was I? Oh my gosh, I got to

start all over again. So yeah, literally put a load to put a

card in between Okay, let Hang on one second and put a card

there. Now. What's your question? Now? Come back because

I didn't want to ever do that again.

Yeah, and don't touch Don't touch this whole,

like don't know, you can't buy it. You can't touch it. Don't?

Don't worry. It dawns on tourists.

Aren't you a store? And Aren't I supposed to buy

stuff here? No, no, just go away? Well, that's why we'll get

into some of the best practices because that's really what I

want to spend some time talking to you about because there's,

you know, RFID and retail has been around for a while. It's

been a great solution, a huge enabler in terms of letting

people know exactly what they have and exactly where it's

located, whether it's in the backroom or sales floor. But But

the big part of this, from my perspective is okay, well how do

you use this thing and what what are the things that you really

want to watch out for? Is I engaged with retailers That way

you've been doing this for 20 years come tell us how to do it.

I said, I'm not going to tell you how to do it necessarily,

but I'm gonna tell you the 15 potholes that I have stepped in

in the past that you don't want to step in. And again, because

that I think is sometimes helpful. But we'll get into some

of that here in a little bit. So tell me tell us a little bit

about RFID. In retail, obviously, the one retailer who

had your let's lipstick definitely needs to adopt it.

But who are the retailers that are really taking advantage of

this from you guys's perspective? And? And where do

you see some of the growth coming from?

So, the retailers who are taste so we,

we do have a number of fashion retailers that that we work with

that are using? They're using our solution? I'm sitting here

over here going like, can I name drop? I'm not 100% sure.

So let's not just to be safe. But the type of Yeah,

I'm thinking about the type of retailers. Is it apparel? Is it

automotive? You know, we're using that? Were you seeing the

adoption curve kind of head?

Yeah, so you know, it's, it's, for us, it's

really fashion, it's really the apparel industry, that's taken

advantage of it. And it's probably where there's a

tremendous amount of opportunity, not just so it's

about, there's just so much data, right? I think that data

has become like, the hot word of like, the last probably five

years, like, Okay, you're collecting all this data, what

are you going to do with it? And that is RFID, right? It's

allowing you to know, where, where within your ecosystem,

that particular item has been. And that's, that's an

incredible, like, that gives a million use cases. So for for

us, it's now beyond just a physical count, being able to

count what you've got in the store. So that was the great

thing that was like the amazing, like, you know, moment like,

Okay, this is gonna, it's gonna save our sales associates

tremendous amount of time, it's, it's gonna give us visibility

into what we have, so that our retail our customers come in,

but like, what are the next steps that we can do that can

we, with, you know, refill, refilling from the stockroom to

the floor room refilling from off site, to the store to the

bathroom? The whole DC supply chain is probably the next huge

horizon of how this can really help folks in the next probably,

I don't know, a couple of years. So yeah, so that's definitely

where it's going along with just again, like there's just so many

use cases, did we ever have this item in our, in our ecosystem,

people come in, you know, a lot of retailers have this. Easy

return policy, right? You know, hey, just show up. It's okay, if

you don't have a receipt kind of deal? Well, you know, there's a

lot of, you know, bad actors out there and RFID. And that data

enable you to say, I'm sorry, but I don't think this was ever

sold in our store. Because it wasn't.

Or at least Could you show me your receipt? I

don't have one? Well, on the sorry: nine times out of ten.

We you'd be happy to take that back without a receipt for you.

It's now we really need the receipt. Sorry about that. I

think there's a watch out from accusing customers of doing

something you can't necessarily prove just saying, I really need

to have the receipt before you do that. And so and there have

been there have been situations where I have literally seen

people take product out the back of the store, walk around the

store, come back in and go, I'm returning this. And they they

try and get away with it for sure. For sure. It does happen,

right?

Oh, it's, uh, yeah, it's amazing. It's quite

amazing. Quite brazen. But, um, but yeah, but it happens. And,

you know, if you're the retailer, um, you know, you

just, you know, like I said, like, our family had a retail

store. And it was always like, pretty much always my husband,

my father in law would just say, You know what, take it back.

Take it back. It's not worth it. Take it back. I know we don't

sell it. I know we probably have never sold and he had there was

no RFID right. There was none of that it but it was just it was

good business. It was good practice because at the end of

the day, you don't know that is a potential customer. Right? You

don't want to annoy them and worse than annoying them. Is

them getting annoyed and then telling to friends and telling

to friends and so now suddenly, this one item that was 20 bucks

that you could have just gone yeah, fine here, whatever is

cost you you know that.

Let's transition a little bit into best-practices,

because that's something I'm pretty passionate about. And I

know you are as well, I think that's your kind of key role

from an operation standpoint and need AP is basically making sure

that our customers are successful because we're going

to do best practices. And, and let me categorize this a little

bit. Let's talk about First off, if RFID consists of a tag and a

reader, let's just talk about the tag first. So if you are

going to go and walk through with one of your customers, hey,

tagging, what types of tags should you use? What kind of

standard? Should you look at? Where do we tag it in the store?

Do we tag in the DC? Do we tag it upstream in the supply chain?

Just walk us through any kind of a best practices that you have

you ever come across in terms of your your experience doing this?

Okay, so yeah, so like I said, so I, you know,

operations is the group that I kind of manage, if you will, and

in terms of the, the, the tags, we so we need out, we don't do

tagging, that's not our that's not our thing. We have amazing

partners that, that do that stuff for us. So the first thing

we do, though, in terms of like a kind of a kickoff, looking at,

what do you have, if you're start if you're brand new, and

you're starting, okay? It's, it's optimal, I think, if you're

starting at the DC level, so if you can give yourself that, I

think the general rule of thumb is about six months or so to

kind of cycle through. So if you start tagging your product in

the DC, and start getting that product into the store, and then

you start having that, that changeover with what isn't

tagged to what is tagged. That's generally we just were doing an

implementation now with a retailer. And that was what they

did, they, they spent about six months, kind of starting in the

DC, and going through it to kind of get all that product out. And

it was probably it was hugely, hugely helpful. It makes more

sense. years ago, it used to be like what we would call a

tagging party. So you pick a few stores or kickoff stores, which

is still, I think, maybe depending on the size of your

retailer, or depending upon you know, which systems are in the

DC, what your practices are within the DCA, you might want

to do that have a tagging party where you literally are tagging,

you know, a couple of stores at a time. And to me that, that

sounds as terrible as a physical inventory. To be honest, it's

worse. It's worse than I think, like, it's just I think that's,

uh, that opens up your can of human error, right? And

obviously, we're using technology, we want to rely on

the technology. So why would we go ahead and introduce something

that could with, you know, all of this potential human

mistakes. So I think starting the tagging in the DCA, going

through it that way, getting everything properly tagged, and

then starting, you're okay. And then while you're doing that,

you're starting your big kickoff plan? How are we going to do

this understanding your roadmap, and that sort of thing?

Okay. So some of the big retailers out there, and

I'll just name a few of them, because they've gone pretty

public - Walmart and Nordstroms and folks like that - are asking

for suppliers to tag it at source. So when it comes off the

manufacturing line, put the tag on there. So that's coming into

the distribution centers, is that something that you would

support as well?

100% Yeah, I mean, I just think that, from

what so it for us, generally, a lot of the closed loop

retailers, they, it's just an easier, it's an easier start

with RFID, right, it's your product, you make it and that

kind of thing, you make it you can tag it, you have control

over it. So that's great. For the bigger chains, like the

Nordstrom suwama set or you know, getting in all sorts of

vendors, suppliers, it does become more tricky. So, but I do

think that the future is RFID the future is in the data. So it

just doesn't make any sense for retailers not to be doing it and

I i do like you've mentioned I do know that Nordstrom says

like, I don't know if it's a requirement or if it's just

highly encouraged at this point. But you know, you can tell

that's, that's where they're headed. And we went 100% It just

makes it makes our job once we come in so much easier.

Yeah, there's obviously pros and cons. Let me

tell you the con. The con of that is from the top let's just

say a major retailer has 5000 suppliers that they deal with.

And those suppliers are making a total of 40,000 items. That

means each one of those items have to be tagged, tagged

correctly, etc. And the amount of lead time, you have to

provide those suppliers, to make sure that using the right tag,

we recommend the Auburn arc spec to make sure that they're GS one

and coded correctly to make sure all these other kinds of things

and they're doing it consistently that once they

start tagging or having tag product come into the store, it

can't stop. Otherwise, you're going to have the same kind of

problems, that does take a long time it could take up to a year

before when the time you communicate to stuff comes in

tags. So the DC tagging is not a bad option. But I think

directionally most people are saying tag it at source, because

of what you said, which is the supply chain benefits of knowing

it just left that manufacturer in it's on the way here and

taking advantage of that, right.

Yeah. 100%. And yeah, you're right. The lead

time, the lead time in retail anyway, is, you know, it's a

year and a half, two years, at least. Right? So yeah, so and

that's the that's the whole thing about about RFID and about

implementing our solution is and when we hire new people, like

this is part of the conversation with them. They're like, Oh, my

gosh, why does everybody says it's weak? Because it's, this

isn't just turning on a dime, right? This is a submarine. This

is like, slowly, it's it's not just about, you know, hey, this

is a great, this is great. This is gonna bring us huge benefits,

it's gonna be a benefit to our customers. Let's do it. Let's do

it. Okay. It's going to take a year, a year and a half. It's a

long process, especially to do it right. It's a long process.

Yeah. Do you know of any manufacturer out there that

doesn't put a UPC barcode on their product these days?

Yeah, no.

Well, that's where it's going right, eventually.

And I think it's bigger than apparel. Because you see people

like Dick's Sporting Goods getting involved. You see

electronics companies being involved, you have a big

retailer like Walmart, who's basically looking for lots of

general merchandise to be tagged, it's eventually going to

be the new UPC for some, I don't think it'll be for all

categories. I think there's certain categories. Like I don't

see the day will ever put an RFID tag on a watermelon. I just

don't see it happening. But for a lot of the categories that

make sense that will become the new UPC. So I think this the

retailers who are asking for that are trying to set a

precedent that says we're going to have one way of doing this,

it's going to be the the UPC for these kind of product

categories. So yeah, Jonathan akin from by Avery Dennison just

texted me and says, if you make it optional, it become like the

metric system versus the US system. And we'll have these two

kind of things that we have to fight back and forth. Well, I

hope you enjoyed that part one of our discussion with Elena at

Nedap. Join us next time as we get back together to finish up

and wrap up our conversation with part two of our discussion