January 2013

Borsheims Eliminates Shrinkage Using RFID

Borsheims, a Berkshire Hathaway-owned retailer, is known for being one of the largest independent jewelry retailers in the United States. With a 62,000 square foot site, they carry over 88,000 pieces of jewelry with items individually priced up to one million dollars.

Borsheims has been using TJS ZeroShrink since 2012. They were interested in RFID previously, but at the time, the cost for RFID was prohibitive and required moving jewelry to the RFID scanner.

Since deployment, the store has been using TJS' system to scan items removed from their vault every morning. They also use the system for scanning items within display cases and for selling items. At the end of the day, the management reviews the transactions to determine if there are any discrepancies - meaning a missing item.

"ZeroShrink has already paid for itself by reducing the amount of time required for inventory counts, as well as eliminating shrinkage and providing better control over store inventory,"says Borsheims' CFO, Erin Limas.

For the future, Borsheims plans to take advantage of TJS' Wireless Pad Scanner. The Pad Scanner will provide data such as the sale-to-show ratio for items viewed and the performance of sales associates.

Click below for full details on the Borsheims, ZeroShrink story in RFID Journal.

RFID Journal -"RFID Eliminates Shrinkage at Borsheims' Jewelry Store"

Improving Shop Security with RFID

Tag everything! - Unless all of your merchandise is tagged with RFID, you have no quick and accurate way of knowing where all of your items are at any given time. This is imperative in order to reduce shrinkage and improve your security.

Count inventory daily - This concept is almost impossible if you count your inventory manually or with barcode labels, but RFID gives you the opportunity to scan all of your items in a fraction of the time it previously took. So at the end of every day, you know whether or not an item is missing as opposed to 6 months or a year later.

The more locations the better - RFID allows you to track all of your items by location. This means you're aware of what stage an item is in during the repair process, whether or not it's on the road with a sales rep, or on consignment. Knowing exactly where your merchandise is decreases any chances for misplacement or theft.

Anti-tampering - Attaching a tamper-evident RFID tag on each item creates an electronic seal. This enables the jeweler to detect any breach of this seal, which prompts an investigation of the tampering, disappearance or misplacement of an item on the next scan (can be as early as the end of each shift).