Avery, Vue Team Up for Low-Cost RFID

Westlake Village, Calif.–based Avery Dennison Retail Information Services and Lake Forest, Calif.–based Vue Technology have formed a marketing agreement aimed at delivering cost-efficient item-level radio-frequency identification (RFID) solutions to the apparel industry.

Under the agreement, Avery will jointly market its line of item-level RFID tags and labels, label printers and printing software with Vue Technology’s RFID infrastructure, networking and software products.

The tags and equipment are required to comply with mandates set by retailers such as Wal-Mart Corp. and Target Stores, which used RFID to track incoming shipments. Others are using RFID at the store level for inventory- tracking purposes.

The Avery/Vue alliance will equip retailers with multi-component item-level RFID solutions, the ability to reduce out of stock merchandise, increase efficiencies, and decrease labor costs and shrinkage.

“Vue’s TrueVUE RFID platform provides a unified RFID infrastructure that allows retailers to manage dock doors, portals, mobile devices, smart surfaces and smart shelves. This enables retailers to achieve RFID visibility down to the item level,” explained Sharon Dalton, worldwide manager of alliances at Avery.

The combined product offering makes RFID solutions affordable for companies that may have previously found them cost-prohibitive. For example, Vue Technology’s patented RF networking technology dramatically reduces conventional infrastructure costs by allowing standard RFID readers to network across thousands of antennas. —Robert McAllister