Background
Ona Llibres is a bookstore chain with 50 years of history in Spain. A new bookstore opened in central Barcelona last year aiming at making shopping fun and giving customers an immersive reading experience. To achieve this goal, they decided to use RFID technology to enhance the shopping experience through automatic access to book content and self-service purchase counters, and manage stock to ensure that books on shelves are promptly replenished when sold.
Challenges
1. It took more time for customers to find and buy books with the standard store design of row of bookshelves and long lines at the front of the cash register. The shopping experience needed to be improved.
2. In the original storefront and inventory management methods, the lack of real-time stock data might lead to the situation where books on the shelf were refilled timely when sold. This had adverse impact on the clean and tidy image of the bookstore and customer experience.
3. The original management mode relied heavily on labour for inventory tasks and book search. This implied higher labour and time costs.
4. Books could not be tracked and managed, and theft, if discovered, could not be detected and coped with accordingly.
Solution
The new bookstore introduced an information technology solution based on the Chainway C72 UHF RFID reader application to tackle the problems facing and meet with application requirements. When a book entered a bookstore, an employee stuck an RFID tag with a code associated with the title and author on it. So, each book in the bookstore was uniquely identifiable. Employees could then obtain corresponding book information and manage it by scanning the book label with a Chainway C72 reader. The employees could use the Chainway C72 handheld reader to perform regular inventory tasks. The excellent read / write performance of C72 has enabled the employees to quickly capture the IDs of all labels in inventory for a quick count by simply walking between shelves with a C72 without deliberately targeting the books. In addition, the handheld device has allowed them to find specific books on the shelf with ease. The system data was updated simultaneously in real time in the background which has significantly improved efficiency.
Outcomes
1. The application of the program has enabled the digitization of store and inventory management, which has provided the necessary data to support stock replenishment and historical sales model analysis.
2. Inventory and book search through C72 has significantly reduced work hours and increased productivity.
Ona Llibres is a bookstore chain with 50 years of history in Spain. A new bookstore opened in central Barcelona last year aiming at making shopping fun and giving customers an immersive reading experience. To achieve this goal, they decided to use RFID technology to enhance the shopping experience through automatic access to book content and self-service purchase counters, and manage stock to ensure that books on shelves are promptly replenished when sold.
Challenges
1. It took more time for customers to find and buy books with the standard store design of row of bookshelves and long lines at the front of the cash register. The shopping experience needed to be improved.
2. In the original storefront and inventory management methods, the lack of real-time stock data might lead to the situation where books on the shelf were refilled timely when sold. This had adverse impact on the clean and tidy image of the bookstore and customer experience.
3. The original management mode relied heavily on labour for inventory tasks and book search. This implied higher labour and time costs.
4. Books could not be tracked and managed, and theft, if discovered, could not be detected and coped with accordingly.
Solution
The new bookstore introduced an information technology solution based on the Chainway C72 UHF RFID reader application to tackle the problems facing and meet with application requirements. When a book entered a bookstore, an employee stuck an RFID tag with a code associated with the title and author on it. So, each book in the bookstore was uniquely identifiable. Employees could then obtain corresponding book information and manage it by scanning the book label with a Chainway C72 reader. The employees could use the Chainway C72 handheld reader to perform regular inventory tasks. The excellent read / write performance of C72 has enabled the employees to quickly capture the IDs of all labels in inventory for a quick count by simply walking between shelves with a C72 without deliberately targeting the books. In addition, the handheld device has allowed them to find specific books on the shelf with ease. The system data was updated simultaneously in real time in the background which has significantly improved efficiency.
Outcomes
1. The application of the program has enabled the digitization of store and inventory management, which has provided the necessary data to support stock replenishment and historical sales model analysis.
2. Inventory and book search through C72 has significantly reduced work hours and increased productivity.
3. Real-time tracking and management of inventory in storefront and warehouses has been achieved. The RFID system could ensure that when a book has been sold, vacant space, where customers were likely to see, has been quickly restocked.
4. With the C72 reader solution, managers have had real-time control over the bookstore's inventory. Customers have been able to view the extended information of all books through an interactive screen. The queuing time for payment has been significantly reduced. The customer experience has been improved across the board. More importantly, the bookstore has been able to open most of the time with the pandemic restrictions in place.
