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Owned by retail giant Fast Retailing, Uniqlo was founded in Japan in 1949 as a fabric and textiles company. Its recent growth as a trendy and ubiquitous retailer is largely thanks to the brand’s embrace of technology.

In the 2000s, Uniqlo began expanding into new cities and becoming a more sustainable brand. Currently operating nearly 2,400 stores worldwide, (34 Stores in Australia see store locations) Uniqlo’s parent company sought to utilize RAIN RFID to refine its supply chain operations, beginning with manufacturing and tagging at the source. 

For a retail chain like Uniqlo, warehousing and shipping operations must be as efficient as possible to reduce product overstock, cut down on manual labor, improve visibility for omnichannel fulfillment, and reduce shipment errors.

Brands that use RAIN RFID for inventory management have reported:

• 25-30% increase in inventory accuracy  

• Up to 50% reduction in out-of-stocks  

• Up to 80% improvement in shipping and picking accuracy  

• 25-times faster cycle counts

In 2017, Uniqlo began adding RAIN RFID tags to each product that was produced and shipped. To track products as they travel through the supply chain, RAIN RFID readers were implemented at warehouses, distribution centers, and stores — enabling real-time insight into product location, destination, availability, and even qualities like color and size.

Throughout each step, RAIN RFID helps retailers like Uniqlo manage inventory from manufacturing to distribution to the sales floor, allowing managers to predict inventory needs, maximize the most popular items, and use real-time inventory data to help employees and customers.

When customers can find what they are looking for more easily, and a store has what it needs in stock, Uniqlo earns invaluable customer trust and preference — all while enjoying the benefits of a more efficient supply chain.

“The more people become digital natives, the more important becomes that human touch at the store experience,” Takahiro Tambara, chief information officer for Fast Retailing, said in a 2023 interview with Retail Dive. “So we want to evolve our face-to-face customer experience by developing digital technology to better have our associates serve customers in stores.”

Here’s a look at how RAIN RFID enhanced Uniqlo’s supply chain strategy and upgraded the in-store customer experience.    

Supply chain automation    

Uniqlo’s factory-to-store strategy called for an automated warehouse that streamlines manufacturing, packing, and shipping. As highlighted in a Huayuan RFID industry report, Uniqlo’s RAIN RFID solution tripled inventory storage efficiency, helped realize 90% savings in labor costs, increased productivity across personnel, and established near-100% accuracy in reading tagged inventory.  

Inventory management 

Once products have RAIN RFID tags, RAIN RFID readers can accurately obtain specific information about the products anywhere in a warehouse, distribution center, or store. This data can include item location, quantity, model, color, size, and more.

RAIN RFID inventory management enables Uniqlo to offer speedy turnarounds — customers can order clothes online and pick them up in-store within 24 hours. With real-time visibility into inventory at all steps of its supply chain, Uniqlo can direct shipments to stores that are low on stock of their most popular items, for instance, and forecast demand for the products consumers really want.  

Automated self-checkout

Forget waiting in line at a cash register to buy your outfit. When customers are done shopping at Uniqlo, they can place their entire basket or bag of tagged items on a RAIN RFID-enabled self-checkout kiosk. The kiosk automatically reads all the tagged products and quickly rings up the total. The customer then pays for the products, barely losing a step. 

Customers love it, referring to Uniqlo’s self-checkout on social media as “retail magic.” RAIN RFID automated self-checkout reduces shopping time, cuts labor costs, and refines sales data that can drive intelligent merchandising.