Last year, retailers worldwide grappled with stockouts, overstocking, and shrinkage. This year, the challenge remains just as pressing.
As supply chains grow more complex and consumer expectations shift, maintaining the right inventory balance is becoming increasingly difficult – and the cost of getting it wrong is high. Lost sales, frustrated customers, and weakened brand loyalty are all at stake.
To stay ahead, leading brands like Adidas are leveraging advanced technologies to gain real-time stock visibility, accurately track inventory across channels, and ensure products are available when and where customers need them.
Here are three key strategies Adidas is using to keep its stock in check.
- Enhancing stockroom communication with mobile inventory
For shoppers, few experiences are more frustrating than waiting while a store associate searches the stockroom only to return empty-handed. For employees, the challenge is just as real. Juggling multiple tasks, they often lack the time to hunt for a single item, leading to missed sales and dissatisfied customers.
To solve this, Adidas has equipped its stores with mobile inventory devices that streamline communication between the sales floor and stockroom. Instead of manually searching for items, employees can send digital requests for merchandise, ensuring that products are located and delivered to customers quickly.
These real-time stock checks also help employees verify availability instantly, cutting down on unnecessary trips to the backroom. When an item isn’t in stock, staff can request a transfer from a nearby store, ensuring customers still get what they need.
- Unifying online and offline channels with a single system
Today’s customers expect a seamless shopping experience, whether they’re browsing in-store or online. They want to check product availability at nearby locations or have items delivered, all while trusting that the information they see is accurate and up to date.
To meet these demands, Adidas relies on a single retail system to synchronize data between its physical and online channels. Store employees can access stock levels directly from the POS system, identifying availability across locations. Online customers can also check product stock at their preferred store, ensuring they’re making informed decisions before heading out to shop.
- Using RFID to track inventory in real-time
RFID technology has been around for years, but retailers like Adidas are now tapping into its full potential. Unlike traditional barcodes, RFID tags enable automatic scanning and real-time stock updates, dramatically improving inventory accuracy and efficiency.
“RFID for us is a key enabler for driving efficiencies in the stores,” Andreas Bierlmeier, senior director of tech management at Adidas, said in an exclusive interview with LS Retail. “In the inbound, in the outbound, but as well making sure that we’re transferring the articles from the back of the store to the shop floor.”
By connecting RFID to its operations using LS Retail software, Adidas gains real-time visibility into inventory movement – from distribution centres to stockrooms and onto the sales floor – allowing them to accurately track where items are and make sure they are available to customers at the right times.
“LS Retail technology has a very high footprint in Adidas,” says Bierlmeier. “We use it across multiple regions, like greater China, and emerging markets in Latin America. We use it in over 1200 stores across more than 30 countries.”
