Every January, with the exception of the pandemic, the global retail industry gathers at the Javits Center in New York City for the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) Big Show, and 2024 was no exception. NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show was attended by more than 35,000 people over its three days, 16,000 of whom are retail professionals, who checked out more than 1,000 exhibitors.

There were multiple themes this year – AI and loss prevention stood out – and among the 1,000-plus exhibitors were many of the leading RFID specialists, who showed how their newest developments can help brands and retailers alike with loss prevention and inventory control.

For example, Dr. Reid Hayes of the University of Florida and Loss Prevention Retail Council offered his thoughts into how retailers are leveraging RFID a lot more. He noted that integrating RFID with other protective measures is essential, such as with CCTV and guards, and discussed how retailers can use RFID to understand where their inventory is located.

“The retailers have to know where their product is,” Dr. Hayes noted. “Items can be pushed into the backroom and you need to know where it is. Thirty years ago, we had a very significant shrink where I worked, but the bottom line was that the merchant had bought way too much inventory, and they didn’t know where their products were. Some of it was even in trailers.”

Marshall Kay, global director, retail transformation services at Avery Dennison, noted that criminals are very crafty.

“It’s a continual cat and mouse game,” Kay continued. “You have to give yourself the best chance to protect your inventory. If the thief would leave a note on what they stole, that would help the retailer. It’s a profit leak for the business. You have to have the ability to make tactical adjustments to monitor products throughout the supply chain.”

Kay noted that RFID’s proliferation into smart goods is often under-recognized.

“Macy’s has done this with great success,” Kay said. “It also helps Macy’s package up cases for police. You’d be amazed at the breadth of merchandise that has been tagged with smart labels. Lots of items sell for less than $4 that are routinely being tagged. I’ve even seen an item selling for 99 cents that had a smart label.

“Depending on volume, a tag is well under 10 cents apiece,” Kay added. “Now, smart labels can even be used with liquids and metals.

Kay also pointed out that smart exits have also changed surveillance.

“You can even use them at employee entrances,” Kay observed. “ These smart exits will tell you what was taken, not just that something was taken. When you add this to camera technology and security guards, the combination becomes much more powerful.

“It’s an absolute gamechanger in the world of asset protection,” Kay concluded. “Retailers won’t discover that these items disappeared until they do their next count, or a customer wants the product. It can also protect against fraudulent returns.”

New Technologies

Avery Dennison was active at NRF 2024, both with panel discussions and showing new products at their booth. Bill Toney, vice president, global RFID market development, retail at Avery Dennison, said that Avery Dennison’s big push this year is in the intersection between physical and digital.

“For example, our traditional business has been working with brands on tags and labels to identify garments, such as SKUs, prices, brands and care,” Toney added. “As digital becomes more prevalent, you can digitize the product, capture the information immediately, bring visibility to the supply chain from factory to floor and distribution.”

Toney noted that Avery Dennison is working on recycling and circularity to use data to even resell the product.

“With RFID, we can create serialized IDs that make each product unique as it goes through the supply chain,” Toney continued. “With omnichannel sales, retailers don’t want to be out of stock, and they want to ensure it is available to customers.”

Zebra Technologies was active as always at NRF 2024, showcasing its Modern Store solutions, which include RFID, as well as Office Depot, Estee Lauder and Burlington Coat Factory on hand to discuss how they use Zebra’s systems.

Tim McCarren, VP of marketing, Zebra Technologies, said that being able to connect store associates with information from throughout the supply chain is critical.

“The store associate is the leading edge of the customer experience. Inventory accuracy enables associates to perform better, more accurate work, and it also benefits the customer, so they won’t be disappointed,” McCarren noted. “We look at hardware and software to empower associates, and now offer a wearable that allows communication and can also scan to determine stock outages.”

Nedap placed a major emphasis on loss prevention at this year’s Big Show. Alex Pena, solutions engineer for Nedap, noted that the biggest trend this year is Nedap’s expansion of its loss prevention solutions.

“We are showing how you can utilize data that has been captured and leveraging the date with our iDCloud platform,” Pena reported. “We can see when the theft is happening and how it is happening.”

Pena noted that customers are happy to have a tool that provides the data and proof that is unknown to the thieves.

“We had one retailer whose employees were doing the theft,” Pena said. “We are here to help reduce the shrink by whatever means we can. We drive inventory accuracy – that’s our bread and butter. If you don’t know what to have to begin with, how can you quantify what is leaving?”

Subramanian Kunchithapatham, CTO of Sensormatic Solutions, offered his thoughts on Sensormatic’s SaaS Shrink Analyzer loss prevention system.

“Our new SaaS Shrink Analyzer supports exit data and analytics and can tell the retailer where the shrink is and how to take steps to reduce it,” Kunchithapatham said. “It also has video integration, and can see what days and hours have the highest levels. We have the best exit system and can read everything in the vicinity, but there’s so much noise so we designed algorithms to filter out the noise. Without the stock, the retailers will disappoint their customers.

“Our customers are very glad we are creating this shrink analyzer,” said Kunchithapatham. “They feel they don’t have accurate, actionable information on their shrinkage.

“We use New Product Introduction Blueprinting, where we talk with customers about their present problem and their needs, and design solutions based in the importance that they see,” said Kunchithapatham. “We are a sensor company. RFID is becoming more commoditized. We differentiate ourselves by offering a full solution.

“A hangtag can be cut off,” said Kunchithapatham. “Our RFID sensor can be sewn into the garment itself, but it has to be added in a few seconds.

Kunchithapatham said that retailers want data on their shoppers to help make their shopping experience pleasant.

“Getting the shopper into the store is so difficult today,” Kunchithapatham said. “Stores want to know why certain zones are doing better than others and what shoppers are looking at. We can provide the analytics that show these answers.

“For example, we are working with a European retailer who has two stores in the same city,” the Sensormatic CTO noted. “We found that one store had significantly more female traffic, and one of the stores had maximum traffic in a different area. Once you understand what the customers ae doing within the store, you can take action to improve your organization, perhaps shift people to certain zones.”

Impinj highlighted two of its most recent products at NRF 2024: the M800 series tag and its R720 reader. Emily Schauer, public relations for Impinj, offered some insights into these offerings, noting that the M800 chip is smaller than previous chips, which opens up more inventory opportunities..

“We have two products here,” she said. “The M800 series chips have several partners who have developed solutions implementing it. The M800 offers better performance and a new chip shape which improves manufacturing, and we can change out our previous generation chip, the M700. The R720 reader improves performance and adds a Qualcomm processor to the reader for the first time. That allows for more management of the chip, faster processing, less bandwidth and lower power consumption.”

Steve Statler, marketing and ESG at Wiliot, highlighted Wiliot’s Ambient IoT tags at NRF 2024.

“We shipped 70 million tags last year, and we can go to hundreds of billions of tags,” Statler said. “Our revenue is skyrocketing, and Ambient IoT will help grow the IoT ecosystem. What excites me the most is the ecosystem coalescing around the IoT.”

Statler spoke about how Ambient IoT works, pointing out that these tags take stock counting away from store associates so they can interact more with their customers.

“Everything is talking to each other over Bluetooth,” he observed. “We take weak signals and send out stronger signals through our Ambient IoT. For example, we are tracking 20,000 apparel items in one store. A customer can go in and ask for a particular T-shirt and the associates can find it immediately.”

Statler noted that Ambient IoT tags are also ideal for regulatory compliance.

“We can track food items as well, such as when they are loaded and unloaded,” Statler said.  “Some items like lettuce, tomatoes and eggs have to be able to be traced within 24 hours if needed, and we do it automatically.

“You have to do track and trace for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but the larger stores want temperature records,” he added. “We stream that information for them without the need for temperature loggers. Another example is overstocking inventory. If companies got real time visibility they could use fewer trips, smaller trucks and travel less distance.”

Dean Frew, president of RFID Solutions at SML Group, reported that NRF 2024 was a success for SML.

“We were highlighting new features in our Clarity Store product line and launch our Clarity Food program, which is focused on traceability for the fast food and grocery environments. We found that traffic was very healthy, with existing customers who are expanding and new customers who were investigating RFID,” Frew noted. “The attendees had a mission to discuss and see what is new, and as a result, it was a very productive show for us.

One of the most unique and promising technologies could be found at the Opticon booth, where Opticon is working with Epishine, a printed organic photovoltaic specialist, whose indoor solar cells are powering electronic shelf labels (ESL).

Dick de Haas, international sales manager at Opticon, noted that Opticon is looking to integrate solar into each ESL.

“This system allows us to place the solar cell on top of the shelf, which is the optimum position to gather light as opposed to the label itself,” de Haas said. “It is ready to roll out. We built this prototype to see if there is demand.

“We definitely are seeing a lot of interest,” he added. “This solution uses only one battery, while typically a store would need 80 to 100 batteries per shelf. The average store uses up to 40,00 batteries, which in addition to the waste requires a lot of maintenance to manage the batteries.”

“We are using our indoor solar cells to power electronic shelf labels, which will be positioned on top of the shelf,” said Daniel Westling, chief commercial officer at Epishine.

Exhibitor Reactions

As usual, exhibitors reported that they were pleased with NRF 2024.

“We have had plenty of booth tours and talks with customers,” Zebra’s McCarran said. “It’s one of the best shows for us.”

“It’s a fantastic show,” Kunchithapatham noted. “We are getting really good global feedback, which helps shape our roadmap.”

“The show has been good. We have had great conversations and meetings and are seeing a lot more on the RFID front,” said Impinj’s Schauer.

“The first day of NRF was very good and exceeded our overall expectations,” said Opticon’s de Haas.

Wiliot’s Statler said that his company was getting a lot of interest from attendees.

“We are getting a lot of attention, and just won the NRF Vendor’s Award,” Statler reported. “It’s one of our best shows, as it brings together a nexus of technology and retailers, allowing us to see our customers and future customers.”

“The show has been awesome; everyone is so excited at the demonstrations. It is resonating to users,” Nedap’s Pena said

Avery Dennison’s Toney observed that the NRF Big Show is the one show that brings together business needs and technology.

“This is a critical show for us,” Avery Dennison’s Toney concluded. “You can talk with retail executives and discuss the technology they will need. This show highlights retail executives and what they want to move into the future and how we as a supplier can help them meet their needs.”

NRF 2025 will again be held at The Javits Center in New York City, from Jan. 12-14, 2025. For more information, please see www.nrf.com.