In April, American fashion retailer Express Inc., the parent company of Express, Bonobos and UpWest, announced it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This included plans to close approximately 95 locations, including all UpWest stores. Since then, the retailer has been acquired by PHOENIX, a new joint retailing venture, to operate all direct-to-consumer commerce in the U.S. for Express and Bonobos.
The company is just one of several major U.S. retailers to file for bankruptcy and shutter stores in 2024. According to Deloitte’s 2024 Global Retail Outlook, the top priorities for major retailers in 2024 include managing inflationary pressures, reducing costs, improving supply chain resilience and responding to changing consumer demands.
As a result, many are turning to new technologies to enhance the customer experience, strengthen their market position and drive profit growth. RAIN RFID in particular, is playing a growing role in helping leading retailers meet this shifting demand and remain resilient in today’s cutthroat retail environment.
Increased Competition Among Retailers
In the months leading up to Express’ official bankruptcy filing, the company’s inability to adapt to changing consumer trends resulted in lower-than-expected demand and overall profits. Competition arising from more agile retailers inevitably contributed to a decline in spending at Express – eventually leading to the company’s delisting from the New York Stock Exchange in March of this year.
With a similar target audience to Express, H&M is a global leading fashion company with nearly 4,000 stores worldwide as of May 2024. Operating under the larger H&M Group, H&M has long been a frontrunner in the retail space, ranking among the top 50 most impactful international retailers.
Anticipated changes for H&M coming out of their most recent six-month report in 2024 demonstrate just how the company continues to evolve amongst its competitors. These expansions include an amplified focus on increasing omnichannel sales to provide customers with the freedom to choose where, when and how they shop.
Further, H&M Group is increasing the pace of investments within their existing stores, including new store formats – emphasizing their efforts to both evolve with competitors in the industry while aligning to shifting consumer preferences. The company is also seeking to reinvent the digital experience for customers in addition to investing more to strengthen their supply chain.
H&M’s ability to reinvent their operations on a global scale has ultimately set them apart from Express. Express’ inability to be more nimble in its approach to shifting consumer demands and overall supply chain management ultimately cost the retailer dearly.
Inventory inefficiencies, for example, meant that products were not as competitively priced as they could have been and did not align with consumer interests at the time. While not the first retailer to struggle with adapting to shifting demands, the outcome of Express’ shortcomings further reinforces the importance of leveraging the right tools and technologies to both optimize the customer experience and maintain an agile supply chain.
Retailers Embracing RAIN RFID
Many retailers today are turning to RAIN RFID to optimize supply chain management, improve customer experiences and more effectively manage inventory. Global retail giants like Inditex, Uniqlo and H&M are among companies that have adopted RAIN RFID across their supply chains and stores.
RAIN RFID is a passive, battery-free wireless technology that enables retailers to identify, locate, authenticate and engage with tagged items using a compatible reader. Uniqlo first started using RAIN RFID tags in 2017 – with readers available at stores, warehouses and distribution centers. This enabled them to track individual items as they entered and exited the supply chain. In addition, once products have RAIN RFID tags, the compatible reader also enables access to specific data about an item, including its availability, color and size.
Inditex, the parent company of global retailer Zara, has long used RAIN RFID to optimize inventory management, enhance the checkout experience and streamline loss prevention. With RAIN RFID, Inditex cut the average time for a stock-take from nearly a week to just minutes. With item-level visibility, retailers like Uniqlo and Inditex can more effectively identify which products are selling out the quickest, predict inventory needs, maximize their product assortment and quickly mitigate out of stock items or overstocks.
By better managing their inventory, these retailers have been able to better prevent shortages or excesses and ensure a just-in-time approach to assortment planning – a process that improves the overall experience for their customers while minimizing inefficiencies. Further, as retailers like H&M place a renewed emphasis on increasing omnichannel sales, it bears re-emphasizing the benefits of RAIN RFID adoption towards omnichannel fulfillment – offering critical inventory accuracy and visibility to ultimately optimize operations.
When retailers prioritize mindful investments in technologies proven to both solve their specific business challenges and serve their customers in new ways, they’re investing to ensure their resilience. To avoid the fates of companies like Express Inc., retailers must ensure that they are equipped with the right tools and technologies to improve inventory management and maximize supply chain visibility to effectively keep up with changing trends and consumer preferences now and in the future.
Ashley Burkle is the Head of Retail at Impinj.
