First simple look at Source Tagging

Comparing to traditional tagging and recirculation of reusable hard tags, today we are more attracted by source tagging solution in Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS), which emerged like 20 yeras ago. Source tagging solution is the process of embedding security label into any packaging or into the merchant itself at the source of manufacturing to protect the item from shoplifting at retail places.

Source tagging now is widely used in apparel & fashion accessories, electronics, food & beverage, health & beauty for the most part, and some other categories. And it will continue to expand and increase focus in the near future.

Now you still have no idea about how source tagging works in loss prevention? No worry, let us explain more.

Source Tagging is the process of despatching the EAS security tags or labels from tags manufacturer to the point of merchandise manufacturer, for example, garments, cosmetics, electronics, food, beverages and so on. The source tag will be embedded into the item itself during manufacturing at the sourcing place. Completed merchandise with source tag is shipped and despatched at the stores and being placed on sales floor. Through out all this process, retailers can reduce in-store labor costs incurred from applying security labels or hard tags inside the store and get complete reliability of the merchandise tagging.

To catch up with the development, TrustTag has devoted itself to source tagging solution for retail loss prenvetion to help retailers increase sales, solve shrink issues, and optimize store labor.

Wanna know more on retail source tagging, please follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube Channel.

Holiday Notice

TrustTag office will be closed during Chinese New Year Holiday Feb.11-22, 2018. If you need anything, just leave a message and we will get in touch with you as soon as we are back from the holiday. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Wish you good fortune in the new year of 2018!

How Powerful Big Data Can Be to Retailers

Starting from the 18^th centuries, the way that how people use energy resources to drastically improve the efficiency has marked each industrial revolution. Coal along with the development of the steam engine, played central roles in the First Industrial Revolution. And it was oil and electricity to creat mass production in the Second Industrial Revolution. When it comes to the Third Industrial Revolution, we can think of nuclear energy, but it was also known as the Digital Revolution, in which internet just debuted in digital world and made the world connected.

We are now under the influence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which builds on the Digital Revolution by emerging technology breakthroughs in numerous fields like robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and the Internet of Things. And for most of these, they rely a lot on one thing-big data, which is also regarded as the new form of “energy resource” in the new industrial revolution.

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, which has established the biggest e-commerce platform in China, used to tell a joke in his speech, “Do you know women living in which provinces in China have the biggest bra sizes and which provinces have the smallest in average? I know them all!” Beyond questions, other than this, Ma knows much more private things because Alibaba has the biggest database in China that has recorded the shopping habits of 500million users for over 10years.

Despite of the joke, Alibaba actually dig this deeper according to their database and found a curious trend: Women who bought larger bra sizes also tended to spend more online. As a result, Alibaba was able to target and analyze on different spending power and do better on tailored offers.

Another interesting story would be Walmart’s sales on diapers and beer, between which, there was a positive correlation when they analyzed the sales data. After some research, Walmart found out why. A man who was asked by his wife to buy a pack of diapers on his way home from work, would always fetch a pack of beer for himself to enjoy and relex on the couch after the long day, forgetting about the noise from the babies for a while. Seeing that, Walmart move the beer next to the diapers, and even make them a combo package for a better deal. As a result, the sales of both increased by 35%.

Other than the internal data, many retailers could also take advantage of external data to adjust their strategy. For example, when they find out there are hot keywords of some candies or hand spinner on twitter, facebook, instagram, retailers would increase the stock and put them in obvious shelf. Likewise, they would also adjust the supplies of some products according to the weather and traffic reports.

As for above examples, retailers are analyzing simple data to help with the sales. Still, they are just the tip of an iceberg, because the data they could use can be even more high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety. That is the so called big data, which is information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that enable enhanced insight, decision-making, and process automation. For retailers, big data will definitely help optimize supply chain logistics, improve store layouts, customize recommendation, improve customer experience and boost the sales in the end.

So how can retailers obtain more valuable data on their own? Why not start with getting TrustTag’s RFID tags to the products and making them smart throughout the whole process. The efficiency will be highly improved with the RFID technology due to location-based data, smarter inventory checking and faster check out process(TrustTag is also offering Self-Checkout Solution for retailers). If you are using our RFID tags for Source Tagging, you will even be able to keep track of the products from the factory, through distribution, warehouse and finally to the sales floor as our RFID tags will obtain more and more information in the process of source tagging. And the more the data are used, the more valuable and powerful they will become!

If you are interested in learning more about retails in the new era, please stay tuned for upcoming articles in our series of “New Retail, New Ideas”, which will explore details of specific technologies in new retail.

A Brief Introduction to RFID

RFID, which is the abbreviation of Radio Frequency Identification, is an automatic identification technology widely used in logistics, retail, library, traffic, asset management, animal identification, etc.

RFID consists of the tag, the reader and the antenna. Tag is made up of the coupling element and the chip. The most important point is that every each tag has its own unique EPC(Electronic Product Code). The RFID reader can be hand-held or fixed device. The antenna plays a role of being a transmitter who transmits the signals between the tag and the reader.

So how RFID works? Actually it’s not so complicated. When the tag enter into the magnetic field, it receives the radiation signals from the reader. Based on the energy the tag obtains from the induced current, and then it sends out the chip information which has been stored inside the chip. This is about the passive tag. Another way is that the tag can sends out the signals actively, which is for the active tag. After the tag sends out the signals to the reader, the reader decodes the chip information to the central information system for the data.

As we introduce at the beginning, the RFID technology has been and will be used more and more popular in logistics, retail, library, traffic, asset management, animal identification and varieties of other fields. What’s the advantages make RFID so popular and practical in a great number of fields? Usually, people compare RFID with the traditional barcode since both of them are use for tracking the things in a fast and accurate way. But RFID shares more advantages than the traditional barcode from the below aspects:

1. Fast scanning

Only one barcode can be scanned at one time. However, the RFID reader can identify many RFID tags at one time.

2. Anti-stain and Wear resistance

The traditional barcode is on the paper so it’s to be stained by water or oil. RFID has well resistance to those things. Besides, RFID is not easy to be damaged as it runs in a ways of writing the data into the chips.

3. Being reusable

The RFID tag can be added, modified or deleted for many times with large memory.

4. Penetrability

RFID can identify the tag through paper or plastic or other non-metal materials while the barcode can only be identified only when there is no blocking.

5. Safety

The RFID chips are loaded with electronic information and they are protected by code so the chip information are difficult to be altered.

RFID technology helps to effectively increase the efficiency of goods management, information management and logistics management especially in retail industry, let’s see!