German Apparel Retailer Jakob&Nbsp; Jost Test RFID Application

Jakob Jost is a medium-sized garment retailer in southern Germany. The company is testing a system to track the RFID label clothing from clothing manufacturers (from the labeling clothing to the retailers' logistics center and the final store). JakobJost said the test conducted by the company in collaboration with garment suppliers is the first example of the RFID application of a German medium-sized retailer.

Jakob Jost has a total of 250 employees, with sales amounting to US $41 million in 2008. The company hopes to improve the process of receiving, stocktaking and replenishing goods to ensure that customers can find the clothes they want in the four retail stores of the company. Although the company specially hired 10 employees to handle the cargo reception, there was still a 5% difference between the actual receipt of the goods and the shipping list, so the workers had to spend a lot of time matching the goods. Moreover, the shortage ratio is 10%.

To solve these problems, Jakob Jost has studied a number of options and eventually joined the RFID research team sponsored by GS1.

Jakob Jost business operations manager Patric Knoll said that the small businesses in the research group are rarely willing to take risks in trying RFID. Therefore, the company allocated a special budget and decided to carry out the test. "The goal is to prove that medium-sized enterprises can also benefit from RFID applications," he said.

According to Knoll, Jakob Jost decided to use RFID handheld reader to test before investing in RFID fixed infrastructure. After the analysis of the test results in the mid 2010, the company decided to invest further in RFID fixed infrastructure construction or continue to use RFID handsets.

Jakob Jost chose Austria RFID retail solutions provider RF-iTSolutions and security systems ADT to help implement the project. RF-iTSolutions provides services such as labeling, receiving and mobile stocktaking, while ADT purchases and maintains RFID hardware.