Kyaia Group’s innovative RFID solution, ShoeID, was developed for FLY London in order to improve efficiencies throughout supply chain. In addition to optimizing processes and helping control loss prevention, the solution adds value in-store by incorporating an RFID Smart Floor, which enables customers to try on a pair of shoes and look at an image of themselves in front of a busy street scene in London, New York or Tokyo.

“We are delighted that our innovative ShoeID solution has been recognised with a retail technology europe award” says Ana Gomes of Kyaia Group. “With the help of our project partners, we have developed a specialised RFID solution which improves efficiencies throughout the FLY London supply chain, controls loss prevention and enhances the in-store experience for customers.”

The project was delivered by a consortium of six companies, including Kyaia Group. Creativesystems developed and installed the entire solution; Avery Dennison is supplying the RFID UHF inlays and tickets; Surfaceslab developed the Smart Floor RFID UHF interactive floor; CTCP, a not-for-profit organisation, provided business consultancy and technological support and the Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering (INESC) of Porto, another not-for-profit organisation, assisted with software designing optimization and forecasting algorithms.

In stores, the key elements of the project is ensuring that the store's management knows, at any particular time, what is in stock, what is on the shop floor and what needs to be reordered by FLY London based on what has been sold. At the warehouse (distribution center), production control and logistics are fully integrated with RFID technology in order to maximize logistics optimization, productivity and flexibility.
The ShoeID solution enables FLY London to track inventory from when products leave the manufacturing site until they arrive at stores. Once a pair of shoes is manufactured, factory workers attach a paper hangtag to one of the shoes containing an EPC Gen 2 passive UHF RFID inlay, with a unique ID number linked to the software platform, which holds information about the product's stock-keeping unit (SKU), style and size.
Handheld readers are used in store to capture the shoe tag's ID directly through the closed shoeboxes. The handheld readers use a Wi-Fi network to forward that ID to the software platform, indicating what has been received and maintaining an inventory record of the amount of product available at the store.

Thanks to a RFID Smart Floor, a customer can place a pair of shoes on her feet and look at her own image taken from a camera aimed in her direction. The image, however, will not show her standing in the store itself, but rather in front of busy street scenes in Tokyo, London or New York, depending on the style of shoe she is trying on. This solution provides customer interactivity and fun while shopping.
The solution also includes a loss prevention RFID UHF EAS solution, which sets off an alarm if shoes that have not been purchased are carried out the door, and a RFID UHF POS (point of sale) solution. The CS.Retail software, which manages all RFID equipment and data, is integrated with FLY London's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, in which inventory tracking is managed.

Through the use of this solution, FLY London has achieved the following benefits:
At the warehouse, the inbound and the outbound processes are automated reducing labor time and increasing distribution efficiency
At the stores, inventories are accurately managed without any effort on the part of shop floor staff
Overall cost reduction by increasing efficiency for all logistics processes
Direct impact on financial results due to an increase in sales and cost reduction.

In total, RETA Award had 32 submissions and chose three equal ranked winners in each category. Besides Kyaia, the other winners were Tesco and EDEKA.