Much of the hyperbolic speech about radio frequency identification (RFID) in retailing has been muted in recent years, but use of the technology continues to grow.
"There are a lot of neat things going on in cold chain and agriculture, but apparel item-level tagging is driving the industry," Bill Hardgrave, founder and director of the RFID Research Center at the University of Arkansas, told RFID 24-7. "There is just tremendous movement there and we'll see substantial quantities by year end."
Drew Nathanson, senior RFID analyst and director of research operations at VDC Research Group, sees substantial growth for both tags and RFID transponders in the next few years.
"Projects are scaling, conversion times from pilot/evaluation to deployment are decreasing and adoption among new accounts is increasing," Mr. Nathanson told RFID 24-7. "Budgets are way up, significant purchase orders for delivery throughout 2011 are being placed, and RFID is becoming more deeply integrated. Simply stated, the end user is more committed to RFID than ever before."
Mr. Hardgrave agreed. "It seems like almost every week we're talking to another retailer moving down that path, and those numbers are starting to add up. We've moved past those phase one pilots and really now into the next phase, which is rolling out chain-wide or a store at a time and the numbers are increasing. On the passive UHF side, we'll see numbers by the end of the year that we've never seen before."
Charles Vögele, the largest clothing retailer in Switzerland, is considered one of the retail industry's success stories, using RFID with EPC Gen 2 labels from the point of manufacture to the point of sale.
"We have begun streamlining our operations and supporting our sales in ways that simply were not possible before. In many ways this marks the beginning of a retail revolution," said Thomas Beckmann, VP of supply chain, Charles Vögele Group, in a press release.
Discussion Questions: What is your assessment of the current state of radio frequency identification technology in retail? Where are the greatest opportunities for its application and where does it still face challenges?