The defects of washing on RFID Source Tagging

Still remember we are talking about the basic information about RFID on my last chapter? What is RFID? You exactly got it, it’s Radio Frequency Identification. We talk about what it composes of, how it works and the most important is: why it works better than traditional barcode. On the last paragraph, we mention that: The RFID chips are loaded with electronic information. Today we would like to talk about if washing workable on RFID Source Tagging.(only refer to pocket label here)

Source tagging is not strange to us: it’s the application of delivering sew-in soft labels from tag factory to apparel manufacturers. Then, the apparel manufacturers sew the tags to the clothes during the sewing production. The last step is from the apparel manufacturers to customers store with the sew-in labels on the apparel. Obviously, the streamline tag factory-apparel manufacturers-customer stores saves the time of not sewing the tags to the apparel in the retail stores. RFID Source Tagging shares the same streamline, the only difference is that the RFID pocket labels are with RFID chips inside.

So what’s the defects of washing on RFID Source Tagging?

Firstly, we need to know the washing process of the apparel factories. There are some main types of apparel washing which share some main points during the washing process for the clothes: A lot of water, additive agents, special elements, high temperature at lasting time.

Secondly, based on the definition of RFID, we know that the RFID pocket labels are with the RFID chips which are loaded with electronic information. Usually speaking, the RFID chips not allowed to be immersed inside the water for long time although we say that the RFID chips are water-proof and satin-proof. When the RFID labels are splashed or dropped by water, it won’t have any affects on the RFID chips and it’s still workable. However, it’s still under a certain range. After the apparel factories sew in the RFID pocket labels to the clothes, the clothes need to be under washing process and it’s not what we understand about the water-proof. It’s not little water but mass water inside washing machine and rolling at high speed with different additive agents and lasting a certain time over 15minutes at least.

Though there are pocket labels that are specially made with anti-water function, the RFID chip inside the labels are still easy to be affected by the high temperature and corrosion at a certain lasting time. It’s just like the cellphone we use everyday, if it’s splashed or dropped by rain or unexpected water, the cellphone is still workable. But if you immerse the cellphone inside the water for some time, the electronics will be destroyed, too.

Washing process is not good for the RFID Source Tagging and it will damage the electronics inside the RFID chips to some extent. We know that the washing process is necessary for the apparel factories not only for the function, colors or safety. What we can suggest is that to put the process of sewing RFID pocket label after the washing process in the apparel factories.

 

Learn More about Source Tagging with TrustTag at ISC WEST

ISC WEST  is coming up next week April 11-13 in Las Vegas. Click here to register for a FREE Expo Pass offered by TrustTag today.

Please stop by TrustTag’s booth#21135 to learn more about Source Tagging. See you next week!

The ‘S’ and ‘W’ of hot-melt adhesive coating and ultrasonic cutting on Eas Pocket Label Tag

Eas pocket label tag is known as one of the security products to be used on garment clothing for retail stores anti-theft. The specialty of such kind of security label tag that different from normal hard tag is that it is more suitable for source tagging that to be tagging at source of manufacturing, and most importantly, cost-effective.

The security label tag is with Eas alarming soft label coated inside with fabric pocket, to be sewn on clothes. And how to make the alarming sensor soft label being coated with the fabric pocket? The normal and traditional production technics of the Eas pocket label tag is hot-melt adhesive coating on the fabric with the sensor alarming soft label.

Hot-melt adhesive glue is a kind of glue that does not have harm on the environment, and the glue is solid state in ordinary temperature, like massive, layer, strip or granular, which makes it convenient for easy package, storage, transport and usage. Moreover, when the glue is being hot-melt to coating on fabric, it can fastly stick and coat when the glue is cooling and curing. This makes the hot-melt adhesive glue quite fit for auto production line with high manufacturing efficiency. Because of these advantages of the hot-melt glue, therefore it’s widely and mostly used for Eas security pocket label tag’s manufacturing.

While at the same time, using hot-melt adhesive for security pocket label tag coating also has its own defects.

1. Not great heat resistance and not strong enough adhesiveness; Have high requirement on hot-melting and coating equipment.
2. Some of the hot-melt adhesive glue will easily turn to yellow when temperature is over 30℃, and it will be yellowing the fabric as well if in this case.
3. The fabric can be wrinkle during hot-melt adhesive coating, thus the high requirement on coating equipment.
4. The hot-melt adhesive coating fabric can be too stiff for sewing machine needle to pass through and has certain damage on sewing needle.
5. Coating cost is a bit too high to manufacture with hot-melt adhesive glue.
6. The fabric material will easily stick on the cutter because of the glue.

Due to the above listed defects of using hot-melt adhesive glue for security pocket tag coating, security pocket tag manufactures can receive oftenly claims from garment factories for not easy for sewing needle to pass through the pocket tag or from garment retailers that the yellowing on the fabric making their new clothes with stains and so on.

Based on the above facts and situation, security tag supplier has found out another better solution to solve the problems——Ultrasonic cutting technics.

Ultrasonic cutting is totally different from traditional cutting. Ultrasonic cutting is to use the power of ultrasonic transducer to heat and melt the cutting fabric material so fast as for cutting off. So ultrasonic cutting does not need sharp cutter edge or very strong pressure, and will not break or damage the cutting fabric edge. In this case the cutting sealing edge on the fabric will not have rough selvage, creases, silk running or laddering and so on.

Another big advantage of ultrasonic cutting is that, it fuses the fabric cutting part and automatically seals the cutting edge quite well when cutting on the fabric, avoiding fabric sealing edge turning loose. What’s more, the fabric material will not stick on the cutter even after ultrasonic fusing, which in some way to improve the cutting efficiency. And clothing factories do not need to worry about the damage on sewing machines needle when sew the label tag on.

The manufacturing efficiency is much higher with ultrasonic cutting technics comparing to the hot-melt adhesive coating so it’s now widely used by security tag manufactures. Ultrasonic cutting manufacturing can increase the production speed, expand production capacity and most importantly, highly reduce cost.

 

Meet TrustTag at ISC WEST 2018 in Las Vegas

 

Dear Customer,

As ISC WEST (The International Security Conference & Exposition) is taking place soon in Las Vegas, NV, USA. We hereby sincerely invite you to visit our booth#21135 at the SANDS EXPO CENTER on April 11-13, 2018.

Since the company’s founding in 2004, TrustTag has focused on solving the problem of retail theft with various solutions while anticipating the needs of retailers. Leading retailers worldwide have been using TrustTag’s innovative and high quality EAS&RFID retail security products to help decrease shrinkage, enhance inventory management, and improve efficiency as well as customers experience. What’s more, by taking advantage of TrustTag’s Source Tagging solution, retailers will be able to protect and keep track of their merchandise throughout the supply chain.

Interested in attending the show and learn more about our solutions? Please click here to register for a FREE Expo Pass offered by TrustTag today. We look forward to meeting you at the show to communicate face to face soon!

Sincerely,

Simon Shi(President)

TrustTag

 

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.