American Apparel improves inventory accuracy with Senitron

The wide-area RFID system brings immediate benefits to American Apparel’s operations by improving in-store visibility and security and by eliminating manual cycle counting, which will empower in-store staff to dedicate more time to customer service and sales-related activities.

“The Senitron solution delivers on the dream of hands-free, full-time inventory visibility,” said Stacey Shulman, CTO of American Apparel. “We get accuracy levels that meet or exceed handheld readers, in real-time and with less work. We’ve been amazed at the effortless accuracy of the Senitron system to not only deliver counts but also item locations. This enables a wealth of possibilities in our roadmap towards a robust omni-channel shopping experience for our customers.”

After more than six months of performance testing in select American Apparel locations, the retailer recently began chain-wide deployment of Senitron’s system, which utilizes fixed RFID antennas mounted among a store’s ceiling track lights. The automated inventory system employs several of Impinj’s Speedway readers per store with each reader energizing 12 to 15 antennas via multiple Speedway Antenna Hubs.

The readers transfer information from tags into a database that provides accurate, real-time, full-store RFID coverage, including detailed tag location, 24 hours per day. By tagging 98% of a store’s 75,000 products with Impinj’s Monza chips, American Apparel and Senitron leverage key benefits of Impinj’s GrandPrix platform further enhancing system performance.

During performance testing by American Apparel, the Senitron system’s continuous monitoring of tagged inventory helped both staff and customers to easily locate merchandise and thereby uncover a substantial number of missing items.

This enhanced inventory visibility, in conjunction with data from point-of-sale, enables measurement of merchandising effectiveness and improves business analytics. Senitron’s system also improved security by monitoring items in all locations of stores, including dressing rooms, restrooms and exits, through non-visual means.

By automatically taking complete, accurate, real-time inventory information, including item location, Senitron’s system freed staff to spend more time interacting with customers and selling. American Apparel plans to deploy the RFID solution in all North American stores.

“Retail executives and managers must know if inventory is positioned to sell at all times in order to delight customers and manage their business,” said Kambiz Saghezi, CEO of Senitron. 

Impinj