Those supplying UHF passive RFID are finally seeing a huge, steady emerging market in apparel. IDTechEx find that this application alone will demand some 20 billion RFID tags annually within the decade, creating a market of $1 billion spent on tags alone annually in 2021. In addition, in 2021 $670 million per year will be spent on RFID infrastructure for apparel (up from $80 million this year). Gone are the problems with read rates and unclear return on investments – the cost of the tags versus the value of the tagged product and increase in sales (reported to be variously from 3% to more than 20%) are undisputed.
What took so long?
This year for the first time, passive UHF RFID tags are being used more for tagging apparel than all the other applications combined, according to the research in the IDTechEx report “Apparel RFID 2011-2021 ” www.IDTechEx.com/apparel.
First came the tagging of rented apparel and linen, carried out by several hundred commercial and dedicated laundries in military establishments, hospitals, casinos and so on. It is well established. Over 60 million tags are used each year, growing to 200 million tags each in 2021.
By contrast, we now have a clearly demonstrated business case for RFID tags on apparel in the retail supply chain based on reduced stock-outs but many other benefits also accrue. This usually consists of an existing disposable paper swing tag with RFID added inside but some fit reusable tags. About 100 retailers and their suppliers are now copying the pioneers in RFID in retail apparel and wondering why they did not do so earlier, such are the benefits in profit and customer service. Indeed, this market is one of the fastest growing RFID markets, increasing 8.9 times in value 2011-2021 about double the overall RFID market growth. Marks & Spencer were the first to use RFID tags for clothing, and this year they are rivalled by Wal-Mart, who being in an open supply chain required longer time to work with suppliers.
For more information on the new IDTechEx report please visit Apparel RFID 2011-2021
Minimal infrastructure justifies ROI
The payback is strong despite minimal interrogator infrastructure used. On average, stores in many deployments have one fixed reader – monitoring the movement of stock from the store room to the store floor, in addition to numerous hand held readers for staff to walk the floor and scan the items. Strong paybacks are reported in this scenario which does not require a large capital outlay for stores.
Smart shelves still a dream
Nevertheless, smart shelves will come – but reading tags reliably in dense tag environments calls for technology development and the capital cost is also a consideration. Many are working on the problem. At least there is a clear path to smart shelves once these challenges are addressed – it is not an all or nothing scenario.
The next stage – washable, woven RFID
An RFID tag in a designer label must withstand dry cleaning, washing machines and ironing. The next generation of tag on apparel – the one for life – is therefore a considerable challenge both technically and in terms of measuring and prioritising paybacks. Existing disposable apparel tags will therefore be used for a very long time before their function is fully subsumed into the woven tag for life.
Distribution by country
The distribution of users by country that IDTechEx have profiled are shown as follows. These studies mainly concern the item level retail apparel chain but they also include cloth in manufacture, pallet loads and cases in transit and apparel in industrial laundries. Thus Japan, the USA and Germany have a great breadth of activity.
The distribution of users of apparel RFID by country in this report:
Source: IDTechEx report 2Wireless Sensor Networks 2011-20212
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