Mountain Warehouse, a major UK outdoor apparel and equipment retailer, has selected !D Cloud, Nedap’s inventory management solution for a global deployment to 400 stores. The deployment started in January 2020 in the United Kingdom, continuing with Europe, North America and New Zealand with the main objective being to improve inventory accuracy, leading to better product availability.
Strategic roadmap around RFID
Mountain Warehouse has been growing year on year for two decades now. To continue this success, it’s vital that the retailer continues to be agile and move with customer behaviour. Aligning bricks and mortar with the digital experience of using RFID is an essential ingredient to maintain this growth.
“We have been very successful over the past 22 years at Mountain Warehouse. To build on this growth, we made the decision in 2019 to RFID source tag our inventory. As a result of this, we will benefit hugely from having full inventory visibility. Knowing what is in stock allows us to provide better product availability, improving our customer proposition, whilst increasing sales,” comments Jamie Morgado, Head of Retail Operations at Mountain Warehouse.
Eliminating a high level of investment with Virtual Shielding
We feel that Nedap’s approach to RFID, fits in very well with our objectives and culture at Mountain Warehouse"
Mountain Warehouse ran a previous project looking into the benefits of RFID. The improvement in accuracy, although with a different supplier, supported the business case which in turn started the Request for Proposal process.
“We were looking for an experienced supplier with a platform that was simple to integrate to, could scale internationally with ease, and was lightweight to setup from an IT perspective. We also wanted an application that is easy and fun for our store staff to use. We feel that Nedap’s experience in the market and approach to RFID, fits in very well with our objectives and culture at Mountain Warehouse, not only now, but where we want to be in the future too”, comments Alexandria Smuts, Head of IT Delivery at Mountain Warehouse.
Maximising on-shelf availability
In addition to experience and references, not having to invest in shielding materials was an important driver for Mountain Warehouse when selecting !D Cloud. Alexandria Smuts says, “One key aspect in choosing Nedap was their Virtual Shielding solution, which will help stores with their shop floor replenishment process, maximising on-shelf availability. Virtual Shielding removes the requirement to physically shield stock rooms with RFID blocking paint or foil, which facilitated a lower level of investment for roll out.”
“It is an absolute pleasure to welcome Mountain Warehouse to our !D Cloud community”, comments Nick Markwell, Business Lead !D Cloud UK at Nedap. “We share the same philosophy that inventory accuracy is the fundamental building block to enabling product availability. This will open more doors for future growth, opening up omni-channel initiatives, and ultimately providing their customers with better choice. We are looking forward to helping Mountain Warehouse deploy RFID globally, and supporting them to develop their RFID roadmap, so that they can continue to build on their very strong 22 years of trading.”
