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I know in France this system have been used by Decathlon (which is a really appreciated chain store of sports equipment) for multiple years. I’m not sure if th

by pjerem 3y ago

I know in France this system have been used by Decathlon (which is a really appreciated chain store of sports equipment) for multiple years. I’m not sure if they developed it themselves (I know they do have some tech team but I don’t know if they have the capacity to develop hardware) or if it’s an off the shelf solution. It’s also possible that the needed hardware parts were already available and that they developed the software and the chassis. And yes this tech is like magic, you just throw all your stuff in the bin and boom, you pay. I also suspect that it only works for baskets that are not too dense (so clothes and sport equipment are ok) because otherwise we would have this in every grocery store since the gain in time is tremendous even compared to self-scan cashiers. It’s basically longer to scan your loyalty card and to contactless pay than to scan your 25 articles. Or maybe it’s just the cost of RFID tags that prevents this to happen because at the end of the day, queues at cashier are rarely a money bottleneck.

Tomte 3y ago
> I know in France this system have been used by Decathlon Also in Germany. It confused me the first time I saw it because it looks so different, but it worked well.
- interestica 3y ago
  Also in Canada. The process feels a bit strange - especially when the receipt is just sent electronically as well.
ozyschmozy 3y ago
In Netherlands as well. It actually picked up 3 of my items when I approached before I put anything in the basket. I was pretty confused at first
- jddj 3y ago
  This happened to me too. It threw me because they told me which machine to go to (#11 for example) and when I arrived my items were already listed. For a moment I thought they had futuristic CV covering the whole store.
  - mint2 3y ago
    These descriptions are making Amazon’s route to simplified checkout look over complicated and not even close to the best route to tackle the problem.
tropxy 3y ago
Also in Portugal. The system works pretty well and has been around for like 2y or more now
pedrocr 3y ago
It's the cost of RFID tags that makes this not viable for grocery. Grocery has much lower value per item so the cost for each tag is prohibitive. Last time I ran that math it would wipe out the entire margin of the business. Grocery retail operates by huge volume over very small per-item margins.
- wenc 3y ago
  Grocery also has a much larger set of SKUs and lots of low-margin items. RFID makes sense for mid to higher value items that have limited SKUs.
avianlyric 3y ago
Two things prevent this tech from being deployed by more stores. 1. Cost of RFID tags, they’re very cheap, but still an order of magnitude more expensive than barcodes and have a meaningful impact on item costs in some markets (notably groceries). 2. Supply chain problems. This is actually a much bigger issue than the cost. RFID based checkouts require a store of have every single one of their suppliers integrated the tags into their products. Most shops simply don’t have enough control of their supply chains to make that happen in a reasonable timeframe. Until every product on the shelves has tags, you can’t deploy new checkouts, but you still need to pay for RFID tags you can’t use during the migration. Decathlon have RFID based checkouts because they mostly sell their own products they’ve designed and had manufactured. For the vast majority of their products the RFID tag is stitched directly into the product, so it’s not a label that can be easily peeled off, or fall off. For the small number of 3rd party products they sell, they’ve got enough volume to get other suppliers to integrate RFID tags, or they can use removable labels because the risk of lost labels is acceptable if it only applies to 1% of your stock. So don’t expect to see this type of tech deployed elsewhere anytime soon. Decathlon’s extremely strong vertical integration makes it substantially cheaper and easier for them to deploy RFID, compared to most other ships.
- Daviey 3y ago
  > RFID based checkouts require a store of have every single one of their suppliers integrated the tags into their product. I'm sure the same was said about the introduction of barcodes in the 1970's. How can every single manufacturer be expected to adopt a uniformed standard, where there are not clashes between standards and adoption? Well, they managed it by collaboration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GS1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GS1 The same was also said about chip-and-pin payments, and further with online payments. This was largely implemented through regulation by the EU.
  - avianlyric 3y ago
    Barcodes are much cheaper to implement, and provided a much greater benefit compared to the alternative (no automatic way of recognising goods), compared to RFID. RFID improves the customer UX experience at self checkouts, and also the opportunity to improve stock management (stock counts could be reduced to just waving an antenna over a shelf). But that improve is pretty marginal compared to barcodes. Also RFID tags aren’t a simple to introduce as barcodes, you can just slap an RFID tag on existing packing and just expect it to work, there are issues when dealing products that contain metal etc. Not insurmountable, but one more fly in the ointment. Chip-and-pin is very poor comparison, there’s realistically only 3 major card networks in Europe. If they mandate Chip-and-PIN, then chip-and-PIN happens. They only need to update card readers, of which there is only a small number of manufacturers, and they all already are used to following strict standards, and cards can be replaced as they expire, and again only a small number of manufacturers. Simply put RFID requires a huge number of manufacturers to correctly implement RFID tags on all their products, just so a single store can implement better checkouts. Why would manufacturers voluntarily pay for that cost when there’s no clear benefit for them? For stores, why would want to cover the cost of their suppliers adding RFID infrastructure to their supply chain, when the benefits are fairly limited compared to barcodes? That’s completely to Chip-and-PIN, where only the stores need to update their readers, and they can easily change to which ever manufacturer is willing to make them. Companies like Decathlon and Uniqlo have a huge advantage, because they get huge supply and stock control benefits from RFID due to their vertical integration. Better self checkout are just the cherry on top, but won’t be the primary reason for adopting RFID tech.
technotarek 3y ago
Also in use at (at least some of) Paris’ libraries. I was quite impressed with the frictionless book borrowing experience. Scan your card and put your mess of a pile of kids books on the platform. Done. Happy kid. To boot, I was worried I was taking too many books. Expected a limit of 5 or maybe 10. But when I asked —- 40!
- r0fl 3y ago
  You can also do this in Canadian libraries
  - wenc 3y ago
    And American libraries lol. RFID checkouts are ubiquitous these days.
uxp8u61q 3y ago
For people listing other places where Decathlon has this - perhaps France is more relevant since Decathlon is a French company.
cameronh90 3y ago
I first saw this system at a Texas Instruments demo in the UK in 2007-ish. They also demoed walking through a RFID reading gate with a trolley full of tagged goods. I thought it was very cool at the time but I assumed it must have been too impractical for some reason until Decathlon rolled it out in 2019.
bohinjc 3y ago
I might be able to share some insights on this one : I worked on the uses-cases, tech design and first deployments of RFID at decathlon, back in… 2008-2009 I guess. We faced major issues back then, but the most important one was the cost of tagging every single product ; both cost of the tag and cost of attaching it (comparatively, antennas and IT where marginal costs at scale). Back in the end of the 2000s, tags were more expensive than today. Decathlon had one major advantage though : it manufactures most of the product. That means we could add the tag in the label at the factory. But still, to make it economically viable, we had to pile-up multiple uses cases. Every single one was important in the balance to justify buying so many tags and tagging so many products. So we went very creative, designing new ways to reduce costs in the whole manufacturing/logistics/storage/retail/after-life chain. Because no single advantage was enough by itself. We also had to imagine these new enablers and uses-cases with the state of this new technology (especially at the time) : airwaves are difficult to predict, and not 100% perfect in terms of detection, collision, … We invented new ways to do things that were mostly already done, but cheaper (in man-hours for repetitive tasks mostly), better (quality and fiability of results), and/or more frequently. Thing logistics optimization (wrong door / parcel detected earlier), whole lifecycle and whereabouts tracking (for defective product callbacks for example), daily inventory (we had the idea to use cleaning carts with antenas to have a daily store inventory), NOSBOS (« not on shelves but on stock », detecting prodcts that where in inventory but not available at this specific moment in the department/shelf), warranty tracking, … At the end of the story, self-checkout is mostly a by-product, not a target for the deployment. It’s something that was made possible but not a first target.

by pjerem 3y ago

Tomte 3y ago

> I know in France this system have been used by Decathlon Also in Germany. It confused me the first time I saw it because it looks so different, but it worked well.

interestica 3y ago
Also in Canada. The process feels a bit strange - especially when the receipt is just sent electronically as well.

ozyschmozy 3y ago

In Netherlands as well. It actually picked up 3 of my items when I approached before I put anything in the basket. I was pretty confused at first

jddj 3y ago
This happened to me too. It threw me because they told me which machine to go to (#11 for example) and when I arrived my items were already listed. For a moment I thought they had futuristic CV covering the whole store.
- mint2 3y ago
  These descriptions are making Amazon’s route to simplified checkout look over complicated and not even close to the best route to tackle the problem.

tropxy 3y ago

Also in Portugal. The system works pretty well and has been around for like 2y or more now

pedrocr 3y ago

It's the cost of RFID tags that makes this not viable for grocery. Grocery has much lower value per item so the cost for each tag is prohibitive. Last time I ran that math it would wipe out the entire margin of the business. Grocery retail operates by huge volume over very small per-item margins.

wenc 3y ago
Grocery also has a much larger set of SKUs and lots of low-margin items. RFID makes sense for mid to higher value items that have limited SKUs.

avianlyric 3y ago

Two things prevent this tech from being deployed by more stores. 1. Cost of RFID tags, they’re very cheap, but still an order of magnitude more expensive than barcodes and have a meaningful impact on item costs in some markets (notably groceries). 2. Supply chain problems. This is actually a much bigger issue than the cost. RFID based checkouts require a store of have every single one of their suppliers integrated the tags into their products. Most shops simply don’t have enough control of their supply chains to make that happen in a reasonable timeframe. Until every product on the shelves has tags, you can’t deploy new checkouts, but you still need to pay for RFID tags you can’t use during the migration. Decathlon have RFID based checkouts because they mostly sell their own products they’ve designed and had manufactured. For the vast majority of their products the RFID tag is stitched directly into the product, so it’s not a label that can be easily peeled off, or fall off. For the small number of 3rd party products they sell, they’ve got enough volume to get other suppliers to integrate RFID tags, or they can use removable labels because the risk of lost labels is acceptable if it only applies to 1% of your stock. So don’t expect to see this type of tech deployed elsewhere anytime soon. Decathlon’s extremely strong vertical integration makes it substantially cheaper and easier for them to deploy RFID, compared to most other ships.

Daviey 3y ago
> RFID based checkouts require a store of have every single one of their suppliers integrated the tags into their product. I'm sure the same was said about the introduction of barcodes in the 1970's. How can every single manufacturer be expected to adopt a uniformed standard, where there are not clashes between standards and adoption? Well, they managed it by collaboration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GS1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GS1 The same was also said about chip-and-pin payments, and further with online payments. This was largely implemented through regulation by the EU.
- avianlyric 3y ago
  Barcodes are much cheaper to implement, and provided a much greater benefit compared to the alternative (no automatic way of recognising goods), compared to RFID. RFID improves the customer UX experience at self checkouts, and also the opportunity to improve stock management (stock counts could be reduced to just waving an antenna over a shelf). But that improve is pretty marginal compared to barcodes. Also RFID tags aren’t a simple to introduce as barcodes, you can just slap an RFID tag on existing packing and just expect it to work, there are issues when dealing products that contain metal etc. Not insurmountable, but one more fly in the ointment. Chip-and-pin is very poor comparison, there’s realistically only 3 major card networks in Europe. If they mandate Chip-and-PIN, then chip-and-PIN happens. They only need to update card readers, of which there is only a small number of manufacturers, and they all already are used to following strict standards, and cards can be replaced as they expire, and again only a small number of manufacturers. Simply put RFID requires a huge number of manufacturers to correctly implement RFID tags on all their products, just so a single store can implement better checkouts. Why would manufacturers voluntarily pay for that cost when there’s no clear benefit for them? For stores, why would want to cover the cost of their suppliers adding RFID infrastructure to their supply chain, when the benefits are fairly limited compared to barcodes? That’s completely to Chip-and-PIN, where only the stores need to update their readers, and they can easily change to which ever manufacturer is willing to make them. Companies like Decathlon and Uniqlo have a huge advantage, because they get huge supply and stock control benefits from RFID due to their vertical integration. Better self checkout are just the cherry on top, but won’t be the primary reason for adopting RFID tech.

technotarek 3y ago

Also in use at (at least some of) Paris’ libraries. I was quite impressed with the frictionless book borrowing experience. Scan your card and put your mess of a pile of kids books on the platform. Done. Happy kid. To boot, I was worried I was taking too many books. Expected a limit of 5 or maybe 10. But when I asked —- 40!

r0fl 3y ago
You can also do this in Canadian libraries
- wenc 3y ago
  And American libraries lol. RFID checkouts are ubiquitous these days.

uxp8u61q 3y ago

For people listing other places where Decathlon has this - perhaps France is more relevant since Decathlon is a French company.

cameronh90 3y ago

I first saw this system at a Texas Instruments demo in the UK in 2007-ish. They also demoed walking through a RFID reading gate with a trolley full of tagged goods. I thought it was very cool at the time but I assumed it must have been too impractical for some reason until Decathlon rolled it out in 2019.

bohinjc 3y ago

I might be able to share some insights on this one : I worked on the uses-cases, tech design and first deployments of RFID at decathlon, back in… 2008-2009 I guess. We faced major issues back then, but the most important one was the cost of tagging every single product ; both cost of the tag and cost of attaching it (comparatively, antennas and IT where marginal costs at scale). Back in the end of the 2000s, tags were more expensive than today. Decathlon had one major advantage though : it manufactures most of the product. That means we could add the tag in the label at the factory. But still, to make it economically viable, we had to pile-up multiple uses cases. Every single one was important in the balance to justify buying so many tags and tagging so many products. So we went very creative, designing new ways to reduce costs in the whole manufacturing/logistics/storage/retail/after-life chain. Because no single advantage was enough by itself. We also had to imagine these new enablers and uses-cases with the state of this new technology (especially at the time) : airwaves are difficult to predict, and not 100% perfect in terms of detection, collision, … We invented new ways to do things that were mostly already done, but cheaper (in man-hours for repetitive tasks mostly), better (quality and fiability of results), and/or more frequently. Thing logistics optimization (wrong door / parcel detected earlier), whole lifecycle and whereabouts tracking (for defective product callbacks for example), daily inventory (we had the idea to use cleaning carts with antenas to have a daily store inventory), NOSBOS (« not on shelves but on stock », detecting prodcts that where in inventory but not available at this specific moment in the department/shelf), warranty tracking, … At the end of the story, self-checkout is mostly a by-product, not a target for the deployment. It’s something that was made possible but not a first target.