GILLETTE 

    Gillette, as a retail industry supplier, is credited with being one of the most successful early movers of RFID systems.  Gillette effectively used pilot programs early on to determine how to implement RFID systems.   

    In 2002, while many firms in the retail industry had no RFID implementation plans, Gillette placed an order with Alien Technology for 500 million tags, the largest order for RFID tags to date.  The company has a proprietary approach to RFID systems,  “EPC Advantaged Strategy.”  Products are categorized as “Advantaged” (products that clearly benefit from RFID), “Testable” (products that are becoming advantaged) and “Challenged” (products for which RFID tagging is hard to economically justify). ⁸  

    An example of Gillette’s innovative use of RFID systems was its launch of the Fusion razor in 2006.  Fusion razors were completely RFID supported, with RFID tags placed on all pallets and labels at the point of manufacture.  Gillette also placed RFID tags on the Fusion promotional displays.  Using RFID systems, the promotional items were on the shelves in 3 days, 11 days faster then normal times.   

    Gillette monitored the promotional items throughout the supply chain, all the way to the cases being scanned prior to being placed in the retailers’ box-crushing machine.  This enabled Gillette to call store managers and request the promotional items be displayed when they had no RFID events to indicate they had been moved out of the warehouse. ⁹   

    The advantage of tracking promotional items is clear.  Up to 40% of stores do not take full advantage of displays because they fail to get promotion items on the retail floor in time.  Stores which display promotional items for the full promotional period typically experience 20% more sales. ⁸  Gillette forecasts a 25% return on its RFID investment  over the next 10 years, through increased sales and productivity savings. ⁹