Nick Markwell

Mountain Warehouse, a major UK outdoor apparel and equipment retailer, has selected !D Cloud, Nedap’s inventory management solution for a global deployment to 400 stores. The deployment started in January 2020 in the United Kingdom, continuing with Europe, North America and New Zealand with the main objective being to improve inventory accuracy, leading to better product availability. Strategic roadmap around RFID Mountain Warehouse has been growing year on year for two decades now. To continue this success, it’s vital that the retailer continues to be agile and move with customer behavior. Aligning bricks and mortar with the digital experience of using RFID is an essential ingredient to maintain this growth. “We have been very successful over the past 22 years at Mountain Warehouse. To build on this growth, we made the decision in 2019 to RFID source tag our inventory. As a result of this, we will benefit hugely from having full inventory visibility. Knowing what is in stock allows us to provide better product availability, improving our customer proposition, while increasing sales,” comments Jamie Morgado, Head of Retail Operations at Mountain Warehouse. Eliminating a high level of investment with Virtual Shielding We feel that Nedap’s approach to RFID, fits in very well with our objectives and culture at Mountain Warehouse" Mountain Warehouse ran a previous project looking into the benefits of RFID. The improvement in accuracy, although with a different supplier, supported the business case which in turn started the Request for Proposal process. “We were looking for an experienced supplier with a platform that was simple to integrate to, could scale internationally with ease, and was lightweight to setup from an IT perspective. We also wanted an application that is easy and fun for our store staff to use. We feel that Nedap’s experience in the market and approach to RFID, fits in very well with our objectives and culture at Mountain Warehouse, not only now, but where we want to be in the future too”, comments Alexandria Smuts, Head of IT Delivery at Mountain Warehouse. Maximizing on-shelf availability In addition to experience and references, not having to invest in shielding materials was an important driver for Mountain Warehouse when selecting !D Cloud. Alexandria Smuts says, “One key aspect in choosing Nedap was their Virtual Shielding solution, which will help stores with their shop floor replenishment process, maximizing on-shelf availability. Virtual Shielding removes the requirement to physically shield stock rooms with RFID blocking paint or foil, which facilitated a lower level of investment for roll out.”  “It is an absolute pleasure to welcome Mountain Warehouse to our !D Cloud community”, comments Nick Markwell, Business Lead !D Cloud UK at Nedap. “We share the same philosophy that inventory accuracy is the fundamental building block to enabling product availability. This will open more doors for future growth, opening up omni-channel initiatives, and ultimately providing their customers with better choice. We are looking forward to helping Mountain Warehouse deploy RFID globally, and supporting them to develop their RFID roadmap, so that they can continue to build on their very strong 22 years of trading.”

Nedap announces that Superdry has signed up for !D Cloud, Nedap’s RFID software platform. This is an important step in the retailer’s omnichannel strategy, with the objective to increase inventory accuracy and align online and physical store sales. The RFID deployment involves more than 200 stores across the globe, with initial focus on the UK, European and US markets. Superdry started investigating RFID a few years ago with the ambition of increasing inventory accuracy. This ultimately would lead to better customer experiences in store and online, as the right product would always be available at the right time. Maximizing sales floor availability Nedap’s !D Cloud solution gives us the foundation to achieve our strategic goals" Making inventory information visible through the use of RFID in an intuitive and simple to use technology is a key reason why Superdry are to signing up with Nedap’s !D Cloud. “We have a strong belief in RFID as a core technology and we are convinced this will be a fundamental building block of our strategic direction moving forward” says James Eastwood, implementation manager at Superdry. “In order to best manage our customer offering it is critical that we have an accurate view of store inventory. This allows us to maximize sales floor availability and presents a number of other great omni-channel opportunities. We can only achieve this by using state-of-the-art technology, which should be easy and intuitive to use by our store staff. Nedap’s !D Cloud solution gives us the foundation to achieve our strategic goals and also benefit from other RFID use cases throughout our supply chain." Significant financial investment “We are extremely excited to announce that Superdry is continuing their RFID journey with Nedap” says Nick Markwell, Business Lead !D Cloud UK at Nedap. “We have a great cultural fit with Superdry and both of our businesses are aligned on the current and future use of RFID. With our depth of in-house RFID experts and continued commitment to innovation, we look forward being Superdry’s long term RFID partner and supporting them in achieving their strategic goals.” This still led to significant bleed, forcing store staff to reduce the read power on the handheld device Before deploying Nedap’s !D Cloud solution, Superdry was facing a significant financial investment in physical shielding of stock rooms. This was necessary to complete the refill of products from the stock room to the sales floor. During the pilot phase of the RFID project, physical shielding in the form of metallic paint was used. This still led to significant bleed, forcing store staff to reduce the read power on the handheld device. Self-Deployment methodology “We couldn’t increase the read power of the handheld any further, as this would lead to unwanted detection of items beyond the walls. On 30% read power it took us 2 and a half hours to count the entire store, while the same count using Nedap’s Virtual Shielding™ (patent pending) takes 25 minutes, without the need to physically shield our store” Eastwood says. Superdry has started the rollout process and is scheduled to be finished by October 2019 using Nedap’s self-deployment methodology. This methodology enables Superdry to deploy at a fast pace, using existing in-house training and roll out infrastructure and fits with the retailer’s ambitions to master the technology.