Saks Fifth Avenue: The Footwear Fashion

With 4,000 shoes on display throughout the store and luxury price points that can reach $4,000 per pair, Saks Fifth Avenue believes it is imperative that every shoe be represented on the selling floor at all times.

To ensure the best footwear discovery experience for their customers, Saks Fifth Avenue wanted to maximize the number and availability of shoes on display, but found their existing manual process was too time intensive to do so without hindering the high level of service their customers have come to expect.

The velocity and volume of shoes flowing into the store made it nearly impossible to meet display compliance goals. Saks Fifth Avenue needed a better way to inventory the shoe display and validate compliance to back stock shoes.

In late 2012, Saks Fifth Avenue launched an RFID project with Sensormatic Retail Solutions to address their inventory and merchandising challenges.  The goal was to move from a 65% compliance rate to nearly 100%. With Sensormatic’s TrueVUE Inventory Display Execution solution, Saks Fifth Avenue is now able to tag all shoes on display with an RFID label and easily inventory the display each day.

The application then generates a replenishment report for back stock shoes missing a display style on the selling floor. As a result, Saks Fifth Avenue has been able to dramatically reduce the number of missing shoe display styles and can now represent a larger percentage of their shoe assortment on the selling floor.

“At Saks Fifth Avenue our mission is to inspire customer confidence and style with every Saks shopping experience, one that makes people look and feel their best. Our flagship women’s footwear department in New York City exemplifies this commitment. With Sensormatic Retail Solutions we have proven the value of RFID technology for inventory management and merchandising and will continue to leverage the technology to improve sales, optimize merchandise and deliver on our mission.”
 
Ed Stagman,
SVP Store Operations
Saks Fifth Avenue

Previously, the process to inventory the display shoes in the entire department, validate against back stock and replenish the missing items, took one week and multiple store associates. After the implementation of Sensormatic Retail Solutions’ RFID application:

• Inventory counts are completed in just 20 minutes and done so daily to keep up with the pace of new shipments
• Associates are no longer tied up with inventory tasks and are able to spend more time serving customers
• Display compliance rates have reached nearly 100%

The RFID initiative to improve inventory visibility and merchandising has drawn rave reviews and generated an overall increase in sales, improved display compliance rates, reduced labor costs, and fully optimized the customer experience. In short, it has proven that RFID works.

Johnson Controls is a global diversified technology and multi-industrial leader serving a wide range of customers in more than 150 countries. Our 120,000 employees create intelligent buildings, efficient energy solutions, integrated infrastructure and next generation transportation systems that work seamlessly together to deliver on the promise of smart cities and communities. Our commitment to sustainability dates back to our roots in 1885, with the invention of the first electric room thermostat.

For more information, visit www.johnsoncontrols.com or follow @johnsoncontrols on Twitter.

Sensormatic Solutions is a global leader in enabling smart and connected shopper engagement. By combining critical insights into retail inventory, shopper traffic and loss prevention, Sensormatic Solutions powers operational excellence at scale and helps create unique shopping experiences. Our solutions deliver real-time visibility and predictive analytics for accurate decision-making across the enterprise, enabling retailers to confidently move into the future. With more than 1.5 million data collection devices in the retail marketplace, we capture 40 billion shopper visits and track and protect billions of items each year. Our retail portfolio features the premier Sensormatic^®, ShopperTrak^® and TrueVUE™ brands.

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