Retail chain, Comic Stores, improves their inventory accuracy and internal operations with Sensormatic Solutions TrueVUE Inventory Intelligence Platform.

Both Comic Stores outlets in Malaga offer a wide variety of merchandise, ranging from an ample selection of classic and cult comic books, memorabilia and clothing such as t-shirts, badges, stickers and many more. Many of those items are unique and high value comic books and merchandise. The Malaga flagship store covers 400m² of space, and the other outlet is approximately half of that size (200m²).

During its 20+ years of operation, Comic Stores has become one of the most popular specialised shopping destinations and a meeting point for comics, manga and science-fiction enthusiasts in southern Spain.

Since its opening, Comic Stores have been faced with the typical challenges found within its industry. With a high number of expensive “collector” pieces and limited floorspace, the stores have encountered several issues including misplaced items and the fast change of new stock paired with many returns to suppliers.

The set-up of two stores in one city (Malaga) was expected to facilitate the traffic and stock exchange between the two stores, however it was often difficult to keep track of the inventory and ship desired items from one store to the other.

Additionally, since Comic Stores offers a “buy online, ship to home” option not only in Europe, but also across America, Asia and Australia – they needed a reliable and real-time view of their inventory to realise the shipments in a timely matter.

There were three major challenges that Comic Stores wanted to focus on while piloting and implementing the RFID solutions:

Inventory Accuracy:

Have an up-to-date view of inventory powered by RFID and TrueVUE analytics that shows store associates what exact items are on the shop floor and which are out-of-stock, to deliver a positive shopper experience.

Full visibility over stock across all four stores, enabling easy shipment and exchange between stores.

Inventory Location:

Quick location identification for specific items via a search function using modern handheld readers to locate hard to find merchandise.

Searching for misplaced items and enabling “buy online, ship to home” option.

Shrinkage:

Gaining a real-time understanding of what, when and how specific items go missing by analysing item-level inventory and loss prevention data in order to lower shrinkage throughout the stores.

Sensormatic’s Inventory Intelligence team was approached to assess the viability of the RFID solution for Comic Stores.

The assessment followed the 4-step approach:

As part of the pilot phase, over 35,000 items were tagged in Malaga’s 400m² flagship store.

Since the store has no backroom or storage area, everything on the shop floor is its full inventory

Due to the different forms of merchandise, several tags were used to protect the inventory:

• RFID Paper Tags (both for inventory and loss prevention purposes)
• Dual RF/RFID Hard Tags
• RFID Tags for bagged items

Following a successful pilot, Comic Stores rolled out Sensormatic’s tagging solutions across their second Malaga store where an additional 20,000 items were tagged, totaling up to over 55,000 items RFID-secured between both stores.

During the pilot phase, Comic Stores quickly started to see the benefits of implementing RFID solution. The biggest value from an operational point of view is the ability to carry out weekly inventory checks efficiently and improving stock accuracy to the level of approximately 98%.

Additional benefits included improved customer service and the fulfilment of online orders.

Comic Stores’ journey with the RFID is far from being over. As next steps, the company is planning a full integration of the Sensormatic IQ TrueVUE Platform with their POS and ERP systems to get further insights on their inventory, shrink patterns and shopper behaviour.

Click here to download a copy of the Comic Stores Case Study from Sensormatic Solutions

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