For decades, retailers have leveraged the EAS hard tag as a visual deterrent to theft, no more so than in fashion retail, and their experiments to use a soft EAS tag has highlighted further the value of a visible deterrent. Click to read the ECR research on hard Vs soft tags.

However, since that research, and especially in fashion retailing, there has been widespread adoption of RFID, now delivering unprecedented levels of new intelligence on inventory variances, by item, by hour, etc to help guide loss prevention efforts. Further, shoppers are seeking a faster and simpler shopping experience, with fewer points of friction.

Hard tags represent represent friction, for the shopper and store colleague, and some retailers in the working group are looking at whether to remove the hard tags to enable a more frictionless shopper journey, including self checkout, and then leverage RFID intelligence to manage loss prevention.

In this working group meeting, with a kick off presentation from RIver Island, retailers will share their latest thinking on the use of hard tags, their test design to measure the impact of removing hard tags and how RFID intelligence can support and inform loss prevention.

This meeting is for retailers, CPG's and academics only.