by Angela Guess
PYMNTS.com recently wrote, “Omnichannel has changed the retail world in ways that many merchants can’t even realize yet. For every giant like Amazon that has been able to navigate the still-murky waters of integrated inventory systems management, there are a hundred more that struggle to adapt… Enter packaging materials firm Avery Dennison Retail Branding and Information Solutions (RBIS) and IoT platform developer EVRYTHNG, whose new partnership seeks to chase the admittedly ambitious goal of embedding trackable RFID sensors in ‘a minimum of 10 billion apparel and footwear products’ by 2019. What sets RBIS and EVRYTHNG apart, though, is that these built-in IoT sensors aren’t for consumer-facing NFC payments or fitness tracking but rather for the brands and retailers themselves to be able to monitor their products at every step of the supply chain.”
The article continues, “It’s the dawn of an age where the second a product rolls off the assembly line, it comes with an identifiable digital signature that can minimize the potential of loss, counterfeiting and even sustainability. ‘The fact that at least 10 billion Avery Dennison RBIS products will be digitized at the point of manufacture is both a milestone in making the Internet of Things mainstream and a huge enabler for the apparel and footwear industry in particular,’ Niall Murphy, CEO and cofounder of EVRYTHNG, said in a statement. Individual digital identities intrinsic to each distinct item might seem like a needlessly superfluous intervention made out of an excess of embeddable chips, but there is real value in securing an entire inventory’s worth of products with trackable technology.”
Photo credit: Flickr/ Javier A Bedrina