Solutions News - M&S placates customers as it trials RFID tags on clothing

Marks & Spencer is making consumer acceptance a high priority in its latest RFID trial, which involves tagging clothes.

The supermarket and clothing retailer has kicked off a four-week trial in its High Wycombe store to measure how the availability of clothes can be improved by tagging products at the item level.

About 15,000 men's suits, shirts and ties will be tagged and regularly scanned in the stockroom with a portal and on the rack, using an in-house built mobile scanner pushed along on a shopping trolley.

The tags are six-inches long and clearly visible to customers. The retailer is also distributing leaflets to customers that explain the pilot in simple terms, outlining the benefits they can get through smart tagging. The leaflet also suggests that they bring back the label if they return goods for refund or exchange.

'Generally, there has been very little comment from our customers,' said Marks & Spencer technical executive and project leader James Stafford.

The trial uses passive tags, which can only be read from less than 2ft away, with the data stored in a firewall-protected database. Both measures are to ensure that customer privacy is guaranteed.

The trial has seen some visible benefits. Stafford said that the system can scan one 'Luton' - the retailer's name for its display unit - in a minute and it takes three minutes to scan 1,000 ties.

'There are 2,400 shirts, 1,000 suits and 1,000 ties in the store. Even if three people count them all, it's difficult to be accurate,' said Stafford.

This is why Stafford has created the shopping trolley mobile scanner. He maintains that none of the off-the-shelf products could give him the levels of accuracy he needed.

The trial has been conducted in association with Dewhurst, a clothing supplier that has had an association with the retailer since the late 19th century.

The technology suppliers involved in the trial are system integrator Intellident and RFID chips supplier Paxar.

- Feature: page 26.