(Replay) What Retailers Can Learn from Carter's RFID Journey

[00:00:00] We were able to roll out RFID to about 700-800 stores in the US in three months. Wait, wait, wait. 700? 700 stores in three months. Yes. Yes. Hello and welcome to the Next Level Supply Chain with GS1 US, a podcast in which we explore the mind-bending world of global supply chains, covering topics such as automation, innovation, unique identity, and more.

[00:00:29] I'm your co-host, Reed. And I'm Liz. And welcome to the show. Our listeners are in for a treat today. Reed and I just had an amazing conversation with two awesome people from Carters, Anna Marie and Gina. They shared with us how their RFID journey has evolved and how it has really transformed their supply chain.

[00:00:53] They worked with their solution providers to get 700 stores in three months up and ready to go with RFID. And in Canada, 200 stores very quickly. It's just an amazing story. They have amazing passion. And it was such a fun episode to talk through. Anna Marie, Gina, it's so great to see you again. We're really looking forward to this conversation.

[00:01:20] Just to baseline and get started. Tell us a little bit about yourselves, your backgrounds, and your current work. Anna Marie, I'll hand it to you first. Awesome. Thank you so much. Good to chat with you guys. My name is Anna Marie Blackburn. I started my career at Carters a little over four years ago. Graduated from Georgia Tech right here in Atlanta, so it didn't go far.

[00:01:42] And I actually started at Carters as a EDP, our executive development program for young professionals. Got started there in our allocations department. To be truth being told, I had no idea what allocations was. And they said, no problem. We'll teach you everything that we need to know. Or we need you to know.

[00:02:02] So I started on the Oshkosh boys team in 2021 and learned a lot about the business and how our inventory moves through all of our stores in U.S. and Canada. And then slowly started to get interested in RFID once the project really grew legs in 2021, 2022. And have been working on the RFID team, officially owning all of our RFID operations for our U.S. and Canada stores for about two-ish years now.

[00:02:32] Which I took over a lot of from Gina here. All right. And my name is Gina Madalini. I've been at Carters for about five years. I came from Auburn University, where I was first introduced to RFID. But when I came over to Carters, I was on what we called our omni-channel team. So anything byline, pickup, and store, deliver from store, curbside pickup. Those were all the operations and projects that I was able to support and launch during my time at Carters. And then gradually moved over to our store operations team, where still maintaining and overseeing some of that scope.

[00:03:02] But adding in all of our store technology, some customer and associate experience in analytics. And anything that new that touches our stores really runs through myself and my team to make sure that we execute that to its best at the store level. That's really cool. Yeah. I am loving where this is starting already. First off, there's technology. Second, both of them are just proud of their alma maters, which I love.

[00:03:26] I just love because Liz and I, you know, we poke at each other a little bit with Michigan State and Rutgers as well. So just shout out for us as well. But let's jump into this RFID. So just for our audience, and we've talked about RFID before, but for maybe some folks that are coming on new, can you explain RFID? What is it? You know, like just the base level so people know what we're really talking about. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:03:53] I'll take a stab at it, especially from what we use it for on our retail side. And then I'll let Gina give a little background from her Auburn days, throwing it back if she needs to. But RFID, that radio frequency identification, we use RFID specifically for inventory tracking in our supply chain.

[00:04:12] Most importantly, and really the critical driver of why we adopted RFID in our stores was to give us visibility to every item in every store at that, I mean, very granular level. Where those items were, how we were exposing that inventory, not only to our allocation systems and our omni-channel systems, but also to our customer and very importantly to our store associates.

[00:04:40] Making sure that they knew, you know, not having to keep track of every single item in their store, which during peak season, feel like we're in the very beginnings of it right now with back to school. We could have stores anywhere from 30,000 units all the way up to 100,000 units or more. So a real deep dive into what our inventory looks like and then upstream in our technology, how we expose that inventory and drive sales for our business.

[00:05:09] First off, thank you for that.

[00:05:38] Carter stuff. So, but then I was thinking back to school and, you know, like your kindergarten and your preschool. And it brought me back to those days because Liz's kids are 16 today. Congrats, Liz. Thanks. And mine are 16, 17 and 18. And Liz and I look at each other and go, how did we get here? But anyway. Because Carter's, Carter shopping feels like yesterday. Yes.

[00:06:03] Everybody has some sort of connection, whether to Carter's or Oshkosh Bigaj, depending on where you grew up and in the country. By the way. Yeah. A hundred percent. We think so too. Yeah. Totally. Because all the kids remember it. I remember it. I remember wearing some of that stuff, you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that does help with the level set of RFID and what you're doing. We're going to peel back the onion on this and get into it a little bit more. So thank you. Yes.

[00:06:30] And it would be awesome just to hear, you know, RFID has been used in inventory management and tracking for a while. But tell us a little bit about the Carter's journey and what drove the decision and that project forward to use RFID. So I'll say there were a couple different big metrics that we were working towards to achieve with rolling RFID. At the time, everything was anchored in our Omni Channel growth. So we rolled this out in 2021.

[00:07:00] So coming right out of the height of the pandemic, Ecom was booming, Omni Channel was booming, and we wanted to make sure that we were capitalizing on the growth that we were seeing at the time. So like Anna Marie had mentioned, we wanted to have this real-time inventory visibility to all of our products in store so that we would be able to give the best inventory availability to our customers.

[00:07:21] So we could make their promise of a pipeline pickup in store order or curbside order or ship to home order so that we knew 100% that we had all that inventory available for them. So I'd love to jump into what do you see? You know, like we've been talking about RFID for a long time. For me, going back to like 2004, believe it or not. But it is this visibility, but there's cost to it. There's training. There's implementation.

[00:07:50] There's, you know, process change. And sometimes people see it as like the lift is too heavy. I'm very interested in how does this transform your logistics, your warehouse operations, and your supplier coordination? The business case really started from the retail side of the business. So our store teams, Omni Channel teams really drove that forward. Anna Marie will touch on this, I think, a little bit later.

[00:08:17] But we are working on how we can take RFID upstream in our supply chain today. Right now we're using it kind of DC beyond. We were able to roll out RFID to about 700, 800 stores in the U.S. in three months. Wait, wait, wait. 700? 700 stores in three months. Yes. Yes. It was like in partnership with our software provider, NeatApp, who we have a fantastic relationship with.

[00:08:46] At the time, the leaders of the project had told NeatApp, you know, we can do this in three months. And they said, no, you're going to need half a year, nine months max. And they were like, just watch, just watch what we can do. And we did it. It was great. And then we were able to roll out Canada about a year later. That's about two, a little less than 200 stores. And I want to say we did that. I want to say about a month. Yeah, it was. That was my project. I want to say it was about a month. Yes, about a month in that rollout.

[00:09:15] And implementation, I would say probably took about six months. So call it like nine months from when we started development to when our last store was able to roll out. I am blown away. I'm not even joking. Like we can just scrap all the rest of the questions we had written down. I think there's some people listening that are going to go, I don't know about that. I don't know about that. But I think there's a lot more preparation and coordination that you put into this to bring things aligned, right? Because there's employee training.

[00:09:45] Yes. Right? There's process training and support calls, all those types of things. So I'm assuming there's a lot more work put into that in preparation to the rollout? Absolutely. Everyone at Carter's will tell you we are a highly, highly collaborative organization. They're at any moment, at any week, we could have a meeting with marketing, with finance, with HR, with store support, with IT. And maybe they're all in the same room together. Maybe it's all set.

[00:10:15] Like we really collaborate with every single team at Carter's. So as we are prepping for our rollout of RFID, we really identified all of the stakeholders. Who's going to be impacted? Obviously, we know stores are going to be impacted. Our DC operations are going to be impacted. IT is going to be impacted. But then some of our other teams, like our inventory control, our accounting, our store support.

[00:10:36] So any technical issues that arise that our store support team is the frontline for stores, all of those teams have to know what's going on. So that if they are asked questions from stores, from their peers, from their leaders, they're able to support and answer all those questions.

[00:10:50] We have a pretty standard practice of weekly meetings when we're in the thick of rolling out a project, whether that's bringing the whole group together or individually meeting with teams, just to make sure that from the start, from that project's kickoff all the way to deployment, and even through deployment into some hypercare stages, everyone's aligned. Everybody's aware.

[00:11:39] We're getting to know what's going on. We're getting to know what's going on. We're getting to know what's going on. But did you have to really push? Or were they like, yeah, this makes sense? Yes. It was not the easiest thing we've ever got buy-in for, let me tell you that. But what I will say is we have embraced RFID. The entire company loves it. It is a huge rally moment for us as a full, full team. It took a couple years to get the final approval for RFID. Reid, you had mentioned it is costly.

[00:12:08] Thankfully, the tag cost has come down significantly over the years, which does make it a lot more manageable for smaller companies to be able to afford that cost and for the juice to be worth the squeeze. It was a lot of roadshows. It was some field trips down to, you know, we're headquartered in Atlanta. It was some field trips down to the RFID lab for Justin and Matthew to give us an overview of what RFID is, let some of our company leaders see it in action.

[00:12:33] And then I would say the really, really big selling point for everyone at this company is how well the stores adapted the process change and the technology. Everyone was nervous. We have store associates that range from, you know, 16 to 60 plus. So that learning curve is different for every single person. We've got, you know, 700 stores in North America, thousands of employees. We don't know how it's going to, how everything's going to land, but they embraced it. They were so excited.

[00:13:01] We had some great quotes from them when we went live. They said it was easy. It was intuitive and it made their lives a whole lot better at the store because they were able to be significantly more efficient in their processes. It gave them more visibility, more knowledge into how they were able to run their store in a much better way than they were prior to RFID. And I was just going to ask you about benefits. So this like, you're right rolling into what the benefits were.

[00:13:28] Not only I'm assuming were there benefits at the store, but there were benefits within DCs and other parts of the organization too. Absolutely. And that, that is, that's where I come in and that is my, my proudest accomplishment. I know we chatted a little bit at RFID journal live, but I'm very excited and very proud again, to Gina's point.

[00:13:48] We could not do what I'm about to talk about without our store teams and without their buy-in and without their critical process attention every single day of every single year. But the, the most significant benefit that we have seen outside of allocations, outside of Omnichannel and the sales that drives is we actually use RFID for our annual physical inventory.

[00:14:11] So a couple of years ago, this is the third or excuse me, this coming January will be our fourth year performing our end of year inventory using RFID in the U S and our third with Canada. But we have put physical inventories of the past away and in our back pocket, and we don't plan on looking back about a 50% payroll decrease since we started this.

[00:14:37] But we have taken upwards of eight, 10, 12 plus hours of that store team attention in end of year, December, January. And we've turned it into an RFID scan on a Monday morning that our incredible and very attentive inventory control and accounting team turn into our end of year books. So again, could not do this without our stores and the buy-in.

[00:15:04] I think it's very well known that our head of accounting is and was the last nail in the coffin. He was the hardest to convince and now my best friend and my partner in crime. But he looked at our end of year shrink results this year and he was like, I can't believe this. This is amazing. The visibility that we have, the way that we track our inventory movement throughout the year. I mean, weekly, we're looking at these numbers.

[00:15:32] And then again, what we spend as a company on that end of year labor has really blown away some of our senior leadership. That is fantastic. And just a major applause and kudos to the both of you and your teams and all the folks over there at Carter's and Oshkosh, Bragosh. I love saying that. Because we're in the middle of business planning right now. I mean, it's an annual thing that all companies do. Some do quarterly. You know, it's just something you need to do.

[00:15:59] And I've been a part of many of these. Hey, we want to go in a different direction. We want to introduce a new way. We want to invest in a new technology. And it's not easy. It is not easy. It's, you know, the proverbial, I have a wheel here and you're pulling a sled and I want to give you the wheel. But they're like, I'm too busy pulling the sled. Like you're throwing me down type of conversations. And you mentioned roadshows.

[00:16:28] And I just want to talk about that just real quick for a second here. Because when I hear roadshow, I think internal conversations you're having with different departments to introduce them to a new idea and let them sit with it for a little bit. You know? And then come back with questions. And a lot of us just want to get right to the, hey, we just want to go and do this. But that is the best way to get it done. And it's actually the fastest way. But it's the longer way when you start off.

[00:16:57] It's like, hey, we'll just go this. We'll go to accounting. We'll go to them. Everything will be good. But IT, support, your store managers, you know, everyone and has a different perspective on it. And those concerns and questions have to be answered. So I'm curious. It was very long-winded. But what are some other significant benefits that you're seeing? I mean, the 50% reduction in payroll for the end of the year inventory is huge.

[00:17:25] But what other experiences? I'm sure that the employees in these stores, it's quicker for them, right? And they get these callbacks of, hey, you said you had 100, but we're showing 120 or we're showing 80. And they're not, oh, wait, what? It's like, are you seeing reduces in anxiety? I'm just curious. There's got to be lots of other benefits. There's three major things here.

[00:17:51] One being, to your point, for our store teams, this has become a recruiting tool. Again, Gina mentioned with our fantastic partnership with NeedApp. We have a lot of different functions and different features that we use RFID for outside of that weekly RFID count or RFID scan.

[00:18:09] It's been a recruiting tool for store teams and back-of-house managers for shipment receiving, for sales floor replenishment, for, of course, that year-end inventory count and a hiring manager being able to say, remember when we did that at XYZ Retailer, that's the thing of the past year. So it truly has become a way that we've locked in our associates and our management teams.

[00:18:37] And they are training the next generation of those sales managers and associates in our stores for high technology, high turn of inventory, and happy customers, truly. So I think that's the first piece and the first true benefit that we've seen. The second, from an asset protection point of view. Again, reduction in anxiety for our store teams because they can go to those asset protection managers, which we know everyone knows one of them if you're in the retail world.

[00:19:07] And some of them are scary. Some of them not quite so much. But they can go and say very confidently, I know where my inventory is. I know why my inventory is moving out of this area. These are the things that I've done to merchandise reactively, to different changes, and who is coming in and out of my stores. I think that has not only helped our store teams, but also just helped give a peace of mind to our asset protection teams.

[00:19:34] And then lastly, the RDC teams. We are very excited, to Gina's point. We started in retail. We feel like we've gotten – I'm not going to say we've mastered retail, but we're pretty there. Yeah, we're like one step below master. Okay. I'll take that. Yeah, we've gotten pretty good in retail. And I think we're really starting to see an adoption of sorts.

[00:20:03] And that road showing three, four years ago has finally taken root. And our supply chain team is starting to be real interested in the benefits that we could see at our DC operations for things like inbound and outbound verification and what that can do for our wholesale business as well. So very broad scope. And when you enter the DC world, everything's bigger and everything's grander.

[00:20:27] But those are the true benefits and what we're proud of and truly excited about for how we grow in RFID. It's so fun to see how passionate you both are about this and about not only like where you've been, but also where you're going. And it's not often that you get people that really lean into something like RFID and take that passion because, like Reid said, it's a cost, right? It's cost doing this.

[00:20:54] No, you guys have figured out a way to make it an innovation and to make it a way that everybody is working better together and getting that information so the customer is getting what they want when they want it. It's just really cool. We have something exciting to share with you. It's a special podcast discount for our favorite event of the year. GS1 Connect. That is right. Our annual supply chain focus conference. And this year it's in Las Vegas, 2026.

[00:21:25] I cannot wait. Reid, how many GS1 Connects have you been to? I believe it's been seven. Okay. Okay. So it's a few less than I've been to. It's all good. All good. I love going to Connect to meet our attendees every single year who bring so many great examples from grocery, food service, retail, and healthcare about how they solve supply chain visibility challenges.

[00:21:51] And in 2026, Las Vegas gives us the perfect excuse for a few puns about how GS1 standards can help you make bold moves that lead to big wins. Oh, I see where you're going with this, Liz. And I can play. GS1 Connect is your chance to deal yourself a winning hand in operations with the power of GS1 standards. Wait, I got a better one.

[00:22:14] GS1 Connect is also the perfect place to hit the jackpot on connections from the exhibitor floor to the networking table and forge high value relationships that pay dividends long after the bright lights fade. Now, that's pretty good. Learning strategies worth betting on for sure. But you can hear from trailblazers across the industry and walk away with bold insights that help you turn risk into rewards. I like it. I like it. I like it. Okay.

[00:22:43] That may be enough puns for the day. Wait, I just thought of one more. If your supply chain feels like a roll of the dice, GS1 Connect in Las Vegas is your sure bet for success. So mark your calendars from June 9th to 11th and join us at GS1 Connect. It's time to take your supply chain game to the next level. As a podcast listener, we are able to extend a special discount. That's right, Liz. As a podcast listener, you can get 10% off the registration price.

[00:23:13] Go to connect.gs1us.org to register and enter the promo code GS1USPOD10 to take advantage of this offer. If you've never been to GS1 Connect or if you've gone a dozen times, there's always something new to learn and new people to meet. Absolutely.

[00:23:35] Again, the website is connect.gs1us.org and the promo code is GS1USPOD10. See you there. So what's next for you all? Where are you taking RFID in the future in your business? Are there innovations? I have a funny feeling there are because it just sounds like you guys are never going to be sitting on your hands. You're going to be pushing all of this technology ahead.

[00:24:05] I think we're both very excited about what the idea of double-clicking down into serialization looks like. I know that is where you guys are really strong. And that's something that as we were getting RFID off the ground, we wanted to look truly at that base level and at that style level.

[00:24:25] And now working with our partners and working with our IT teams, I think we're really ready to double-click down into that serialization piece and truly track item by item how we move inventory through our supply chain. Instead of that broader style level, it's a lot of inventory.

[00:24:45] It's a heck of a lot of data and a lot of hand-holding just to get our technology where it needs to be and our in-store teams prepared for the unlocks that this can have in our software. But I'm very excited about how this can impact supply chain, our retail stores, and upgrading our technology to support something like serialization. So, yeah, I think that's probably my number one and my big project for moving forward.

[00:25:14] I'm curious if you have any advice for companies that are, you know, maybe they're in the middle of this. Maybe they turned it off when they heard that, yeah, we did 700 stores in three months, right? That's what it was, 700 in three months? Yeah, 700. Yeah, you heard that, right? They're not even listening right now, so hopefully they'll come back. So impressive.

[00:25:37] But maybe you could share some advice or things to look out for, or maybe it's common objections to what you were trying to do. You mentioned your accounting colleague who was the last person that really had to win the most. It makes sense. It's a big investment. It's investment in technology. It's investment in people. There's, you know, room for error. You know, it could go sideways. It's scary for a lot of people.

[00:26:05] So I didn't know if you had any best practices or things that are common. Like, these are common objections. Just head them straight on or let people digest them. I think, you know, we've talked about a couple RFID myths, if you will. Like, RFID is expensive. It's challenging. It's a hard technology to adopt. And it's highly complex.

[00:26:26] Well, you know, yes, all of those things were very, very true 10 years ago, 20 years ago, when this first concept was really being developed and understood. But a lot of that has really normalized in the past couple years. The cost has come significantly down. The adoption has, I think it's easier to adopt now. There's amazing solution providers out there who have built solutions that are intuitive and easy for people to digest.

[00:26:55] And it is still complex. So I won't fully say that's a, I won't fully myth bust that one here. But I think that there's so many people in this space now. And the awareness has grown so high that you have set people that, companies and people that are looking to adopt RFID. There's this whole community of people out in the world that they can tap into to help kind of digest some of those complexities. So there's more experience out there with your solution partner members and industry.

[00:27:25] You know, not like, it's not bleeding edge anymore. It's not cutting edge anymore. It's more mainstream. And there's a lot of experience where things have been tried and tested and failed and proved upon yet. So lean into your partner. I had someone tell me that RFID is kind of old news. And it's funny because while I totally don't disagree, there's a lot of companies that it's brand new news for them. They have not even thought about it. They don't, some of them don't even know what it is.

[00:27:55] So it's really in this weird stage in the adoption curve right now. I mean, that's not surprising to me at all. Cause we're still hearing about, you know, you talked about Omnichannel and hearing about Omnichannel for decades. We hear we're digitizing our business. And for some folks that's literally moving from pen and paper in a DC to a tablet, but their process hasn't changed much. So they're kind of, there's everything in between. All right.

[00:28:24] So let us jump into our two last questions of the day. Gina, I'm going to start with you first. And then Anna Marie, I'm going to come to you next, but what is your favorite technology that you're using today? Could be at work, could be personal life. And let's not say RFID. Dang it. Yeah. Let me think of a new one.

[00:28:47] So I have to shout out my, my favorite influencer, Anna Marie Blackburn, because she has influenced me to get a ultra human ring that I've had for like two or three weeks. And I had been looking at them before, but Anna Marie had the ultra human and I was kind of debating. And she told me all the awesome data and all the cool metrics that she gets access to. And that was, that was really what sold the deal for me. I've never had a piece of like, I've ever had like a smartwatch or anything like that. So this is my first like med tech item that I've ever owned.

[00:29:17] And I love the insights and the data that it gives me on my overall health and wellbeing. That's fantastic. Wow. And Anna Marie is really influencing here. I know. Listen, I came to the office and I said, you have to get it. It's amazing. We compare sleep scores. It's become our first thing that we talk about in the morning every time we see each other. So definitely happy to be an influencer on this to make our lives better. Mine is a little bit different.

[00:29:45] I will say that we have seen some really cool, I'm cheating. I'm going to say just a little bit of RFID, just a little bit. We've seen some really cool, really cool things from our transportation providers and what they are doing with RFID. So how packages move through supply chain and how updates get to customers, how updates get to retailers that are moving packages through these transportation providers.

[00:30:12] And I am a firm believer that Newly, either of you heard of the brand or the company Newly? So you rent clothes and they get delivered. Yes. So as a wannabe fashion girl, I get tired of what's in my closet for the office and I need bold new colors. I need new jackets. I need new pants.

[00:30:38] Unfortunately, my budget does not align with this need. However, Newly for the last few years has been my saving grace. So in the thick of, you know, mid-20s wedding season and office visits and events out the wazoo, it's really been my favorite piece of technology and how we can kind of attack the turn of fast fashion with something like quality pieces and getting a lot of use out of each item.

[00:31:07] So that is my favorite piece of technology that I also do not let anyone at the office not hear about. Well, we're going to check it out for sure. I don't know if Reed will, but I will. Reed, I don't know if you're the target demographic. I have a daughter. I have a wife. Okay. That's true. Subscription here. Yeah. I'm going to live their best life. Get a gift card for the holidays. I think you might be a really cool dad or really cool husband if that's the case.

[00:31:36] That's a great idea. That's a great idea. Okay. Last question. So, Gina, what is something new that you would like to learn about in the near future? And neither of you can say serialization. Gosh. Teacher's best. Wow. Yeah. Is this like personally or professionally? Either one. Either one. Okay. Okay. I just finished my MBA a couple months ago.

[00:32:01] So, I'm really kind of shifting into like personally what I want to learn. And something that I've wanted to do for a while is become a sommelier. Oh, okay. Got it. Maybe that's in the future. Hopefully that's in the future for me. Mine is work related only because I like to make new friends in this business and learn what they do and really stick my nose in. But I did share with our head of DC operations last week on a call that I want to go to the DC.

[00:32:30] I want to spend a day shadowing. I want to understand in the highest technical environment how orders get to stores and our customers. And then the lowest environment where we're RFID tagging, where we're changing hangers and what the cost looks like, et cetera. And my main goal is to not be the girl who makes them erase that board of however many days since last incident. My goal is to get all the way through this experience without having to change that or

[00:33:00] take it down to zero. But I think that's a part of my career that I haven't quite been able to touch into yet and really dig in. So, I would like to understand from our professionals and our DC teams are amazing and so knowledgeable just what they do every day and how I can learn about their world. I can't thank you both enough on behalf of Liz and I and the whole crew here at the Next Level Supply Chain here at GS1US. Sincerely, this has been a great call.

[00:33:30] You know, your organization and our industry is really lucky to have people like you in this. As Liz said, love your passion, your desire to try new things and to learn. Learn it's infectious. And be careful as you walk around these conferences, you're going to have more and more people coming up to you now and going, how did you do it? 700? I heard the episode. 703 months. So yeah, you might need some security detail going forward. Absolutely.

[00:33:59] It has been a pleasure to talk to both of you guys and Liz to meet you. You're always welcome here in ATL. And it's just been an honor. And honestly, a bucket list item to participate. Yay. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Have a great day. Thank you guys so much. Thank you for joining the Next Level Supply Chain with GS1US. If you enjoyed today's show, you can subscribe to our feed or explore more great episodes wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:34:27] Don't forget to share and follow us on social media. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.