Riverside Greetings to boost store sales with RFID trial

Card supplier Riverside Greetings is to trial a new stocktaking system, which it predicts will help retailers boost sales of its products by 20%.

The firm’s managing director Andrew Glen told RN it will begin a three-month pilot of cards installed Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in November. These will be trialed in several stores across England and will allow the company’s sales reps to conduct stock takes much faster. For example, a recent test saw more than 400 cards audited in one minute

The system will improve how Riverside Greetings analyses sales in stores, giving it more specific information on card type, location and price point. The RFID chip will only be a small dot on the cards and retailers do not need any new equipment themselves.

Glen said Riverside Greetings expects sales with existing retailers to increase by 20% as a result of the RFID scheme. He added: “Having the RFID stock control system will dramatically improve the productivity of our van sales team who currently have to complete manual stock checks which can take up to 40% of their in-call time.

“They’ll have more time available to work with our retail partners to help them develop the category in their businesses and equally importantly they’ll have the category insights and data to drive those improvements.”