Footwear Industry Footwear Industry - empirica

Footwear
For most companies, RFID is not yet commercially justified. In this respect, the
position expressed by the management of Moreschi 81 is particularly meaningful. Moreschi
considered the possibility of adopting RFID as a mean to control production and delivery,
substituting bar codes. However, the company decided not to proceed, as the costbenefit
balance is not yet convincing. Moreover, there are still concerns about the cost of
supporting equipment (readers and writers) and about technical reliability of the solution
proposed. As the bar code still leaves ground for manual intervention in case of technical
default, this solution is still preferable.
In addition, to fully exploit its potential it is necessary that RFID is deployed in a
standardised manner along the entire supply chain. This implies the adoption of
industry standards, integration with internal information systems, investments in RFID
tagging and reading equipment and in supporting technology infrastructure.
Only a few pioneering experiences of RFID usage on a large scale have been reported
and these are found among the suppliers of large retailers exerting their bargaining power
on manufacturers. There is also limited experience of RFID usage for luxury goods,
where the high unit cost may provide economic justification (see Business Example about
Prada) or for special applications, related to safety and security (see case study about
Safe Way, Section 4.3.2).
There are indications that demands from large retailers will play a major role in pushing
the adoption of RFID by manufacturers. Relevant experiences have already been
described by the e-Business W@tch in other mass markets, such as Food &
Beverages 82 . In the apparel retail industry, the UK retailer Marks & Spencer started its
examination of RFID tagging apparel in April 2003, when it tagged all of its men's suits,
shirts and ties at one of its stores. The initiative will be extended to further 53 stores
within 2006. Marks & Spencer has focused its RFID apparel tagging on helping it keep
track of in-store inventory and ensure the control of out-of-stock 83 . As for footwear
retailers, they have recently agreed to set up a “business action group” under the
auspices of EPCglobal 84 to drive the use of RFID tagging systems.
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82
83
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See case study in Section 4.2.2 of this Report.
see e-Business W@tch Sector Study on the Food and Beverages Industry, July 2005, page 28.
The study report is available at www.ebusiness-watch.org ('resources')
RFID Journal, February 18, 2006.
EPCglobal Inc is the organisation entrusted by industry to establish and support the
EPCglobal Network for the development of industry-driven standards for the Electronic
Product Code (EPC) to support the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). See
www.epcglobalinc.org.
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