By Steve Halliday, President, RAIN Alliance

Excuse me for borrowing the title of the famous 2006 movie The Devil Wears Prada for this blog. It just seemed to fit.

Normally, I’m not a Vogue Magazine reader – I’m definitely not the right demographic. However, an article about the famous fashion house’s use of RFID found its way into Vogue Magazine this week.

That got my attention.

Frankly, when a magazine like Vogue devotes space to an RFID story one can only assume that RAIN RFID has achieved an important level of acceptance and market inevitability as well as a general understanding of the technology’s inherent usefulness beyond the technologists of society. That is certainly the case with RAIN RFID.

For those unfamiliar, Prada S.p.A., is an Italian luxury fashion house with annual net sales of around three billion Euros. It specializes in leather handbags, travel accessories, shoes, ready-to-wear clothing, perfumes, and other accessories.

It’s no surprise that apparel/retail is an important market using RAIN RFID. According to our own market research, apparel and retail are key market areas with 80 billion in annual volume and a 16% attachment rate. In addition, a case can be made for the pandemic’s impact in helping to expose a number of weak links in the non-digital omnichannel chain, hastening the need and the move toward RAIN RFID solutions.

The market research report, the only one of its kind, is available for a discount to RAIN Alliance members.

Prada and RAIN RFID

Prada has an ongoing project to add RFID chips to all its products according to the Vogue article to enhance the omnichannel experience. Prada Group’s Massimo Vian was interviewed for the article. Vian oversees areas including the production and distribution of its ready-to-wear apparel, shoes, and leather goods and accessories.

According to Vian, RFIDs are “increasingly relevant” because of blockchains. I’m tempted to send Massimo the 4th edition of our “What is RAIN RFID?” eBook so he can see just how relevant RAIN RFID already is in the retail and apparel space, as well as many other applications.

But I digress. Vian reported that Prada’s blockchains allow each product to be assigned a unique digital identity for authentication and tracking. He said, “It allows a very smooth operation from the industrial side to stores, and in the future, will enable connectivity with consumers throughout the life of the product.”

In the near future, Prada is going to leverage RAIN RFID to, among other things, allow customers to customize products before they go into production. The goal is to engage early and often with the customer. He doesn’t describe how that might be done and leaves a lot of unanswered questions about RAIN RFID and the omnichannel experience. Fortunately, there is an accompanying video that provides a bit more detail.

For more information, check out all the RAIN Alliance resources: https://rainrfid.org/resources/