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https://www.trusttag.com

Posts by Simon Shi:

Auto-Retractable Spider Wrap

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With many market researches, including interviewing the retailers and questionnaire survey, TrustTag has found that over 90% of the retailers think that it costs too much time to apply the spider wrap to box and retract the lanyards back after detaching. The costs of manpower and time invested in this process has been a headache for retailers.

Based on the real-time needs of the market, TrusTag is honored to announce that our R&D Team has developed a new functional spider wrap: auto-retractable spider wrap.

TrustTag’s auto-retractable spider wrap is spring-loaded with the power installation and the cables can retract back by itself with the retractable spring. This function can save a lot of time either on applying the spider wrap to box or detaching it from box. When applying, the auto-retractable spider wrap can grip the box so that the lanyards will be tight and organized without too much adjustment like the standard spider wraps. When detaching, the lanyards will retract back very quickly automatically. The auto-retractable spider wrap saves about 65% of the time applying and detaching compare to the standard spider wrap.

To conclude, here are some of the key features of TrustTag’s auto-retractable spider wrap:

  • Auto-Retractable

Save time greatly when applying and detaching

  • Replaceable Barrel

The barrel(spring-loaded power box) is an add-on part to our standard spider that can be easily loaded, unloaded or even replaced when aged.

  • Replaceable Battery

The battery is not just long-lasting, but it is also replaceable!

  • Dual Frequencies

Available to make AM, RF and even RFID in one same tag

  • Multiple alarms versions and different lock types available

AI – The Key to Smart Retail

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In the last few years, AI(Artificial Intelligence) has become the most popular technology in  industrial innovation. AI technology enhances the development of data analysis, AI robotics, language processing, computer vision, etc. And they are widely used in various area, like unmanned driving, aerospace, health care, manufacture, education, finance, etc. Today, we will talk about how retail industry benefits from AI technology, which enables retailers to explore what the customers are interested in to customize recommendation and improve customer experience greatly.

AI Online Store – Knows better what you are looking for

Based on data mining and deep learning, AI make the isolated massive data connected and much more valuable for easier customer analysis and better service. As mentioned in my other article “How Powerful Big Data Can Be to Retailers” , as long as retailers can use the big data well, they would also be able to predict sales and optimize their supply chains.

For example, when you search “Red Skirt” on Amazon, different log in accounts may have different search results based on the previous purchases. With the help of AI, amazons would recommend Red Skirts that are in fashion style and using fabric material you like while fitting your shape. This way, customer will be able to find what they need much quicker, while enjoying the individuation of the Red Skirt.

The AI search engine can do more than that. Have you ever seen something interested in buying but don’t know the name of it or even you know the name but still can’t find the exact same one online? No worries, with AI, now you can just take a picture and upload it to the shopping website like Ebay to find out the exact products you want!

Taking advantage of AI technology, online stores are also able to push products that you would most likely buy based on your previous purchase, not just random recommendation as before. In a word, AI knows you better, and helps to find what you need faster!

AI Speaker – The entrance to a smart home

Since Amazon Echo(Alexa) get into homes, they have been playing an important role in the interactive scenario to endow people easy access to the internet and different appliances at home. Now there are more and more AI Speakers in the market, like Google Home, Home Pod from Apple, Invoke from Microsoft etc. It is so magical about them that they will answer whatever questions you ask and execute commands. Just say out what you need and free your hands!

What is a day like with an AI Speaker? Waking up by the AI Speaker that is set to alarm at 6:00am, you ask it to open the curtain to enjoy the sunshine and your favorite music from AI Speaker. After some morning exercise, you ask AI speaker to turn down the AC and feel like to have a coke, but find out there’s no more in the fridge, so you ask AI Speaker to order some more drinks and fruits online to your fridge. AI Speaker can do much more than you can imagine, like call Uber to go out, ask it to turn on lights when get back home, to turn on the TV and choose your favorite TV show, to dim or turn off the light when you are ready to sleep and even play some white noise to help with your sleep and have a sweet dream.

Now many AI Speaker suppliers are lowering the price a lot, even lower than the manufacturing cost. Why? Because they see a bright future for the huge smart appliances markets that they could probably take over simply by one small AI Speaker, which is playing an important role to control the smart home. Imagine that when people become addicted to control everything at home by speak to the AI Speaker, aren’t they going to buy more and more appliances that work with the AI Speaker? Amazon is acting quick to lead their way to take over the big smart retail market. And obviously other retailers are catching up to fight for the huge markets for smart appliances.

Magic Mirror – Help to tell what fits you better

For ladies, trying different colors of lipsticks can be very frustrated as they only have one mouth but there are so many different brands and colors to try on. Even they try to clean the previous trial, there is still leftover that would affect the next trial. However, with the help of magic mirror, they will be able test different colors on their lips without actually trying it on. They only need to take out different lipsticks in front of the magic mirror, which will show different results accordingly.

Apparel stores also have been utilizing magic mirrors to help customers with choosing clothes of different styles and sizes and to try on various of combinations simply through a touch screen. This way, customers don’t need to wait to use the fitting room and put different clothes on and off any more. The magic mirror is also able to tell you what size and colors are available in stock and even receive your order to ask staffs to bring the clothes you need.

So how does magic mirror work to make this happen? First of all, in order to detect the apparels, retailers usually put RFID tags on apparels and RFID reader inside the Magic Mirror. This way, each apparel has their own identification that can be read in front of the magic mirror. After it is shown on the magic mirror, it will also help you to try on the apparel with different sizes and colors and recommend different combination with other apparels. Needless to say, AI technology contributes a lot to above customize process in selecting the satisfying apparels and complete a pleasant purchase.

Self-Checkout – No more lines

Since Amazon came up with the idea of Amazon Go in December, 2016, and started to roll out to the public in January, 2018, Self-Checkout has been highly touted in the retail industry. As the pioneer in Self-Checkout, Amazon Go’s grab-and-go shopping experience is made possible by the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion, and AI deep learning in the entire store.

However, because of the various complicated high-tech applied in Amazon Go stores, it would cost too much to build just a grocery store like that, so it is not practical to roll out stores like that in large scale for most retailers at the stage. Therefore, more and more Self-Checkout solutions are popping up with cheaper solutions and larger scale to take another step closer to consumers.

TrustTag is partnered on the Self-Checkout solution with QueueHop, one of world’s leading technology providers of autonomous retail checkout. For us, we have come up with two Self-Checkout solutions currently.

One is Smart Shopping Cart Solution for supermarkets or grocery stores. The cart is equipped with cameras, weighing system, touch screen and POS system that are enabled by technologies like deep learning, image recognition, neural network, sensor fusion, in-store navigation, etc. to provide tailored recommendations and improve customer experience. With AI technology, the cart is able to keep learning on identifying all products in stores to fulfill the scan-less image recognition tech. So customer only need to take and put whatever they want into the cart and checkout on the touch screen and POS on the smart cart. This is not as convenient as Amazon Go, but it cost 60% less, which is more practical to roll out in large scale for retailers.

TrustTag’s the other Self-Checkout Solution is designed for apparel stores, which is even cheaper, only 5% of the Amazon Go’s cost. Because retailers only need to equip the store with Self-Checkout Kiosks and tags that are based on EAS and RFID technology. For more details about this solution, please click here.

If you are interested in learning more about retails in the new era, please stay tuned for upcoming articles in our series of “New Retail, New Ideas”, which will explore details of specific technologies in new retail.

TrustTag is Awarded A-Level Taxpayer

On April 19, 2018, Guangdong Local Taxation Bureau released a list of tax-paying credit rating of the year 2017 confirmed by Guangzhou Municipal Office, SAT & Guangzhou Municipal Local Taxation Bureau. There are five levels in the rating: A Level, B Level, M Level, C level and D Level (Best>>Worst). Expectedly, Virginland Technology Co., Ltd(TrustTag) is awarded A-Level Taxpayer on the rating.

As a taxpayer, what title of honor does an enterprise desire most? It must be A-Level Taxpayer on tax-paying credit rating. Becoming an A-Level taxpayer means it is a high-integrity enterprise and admitted to enjoy more convenient tax service. What’s more, if an enterprise won the honor of A-Level Taxpayer, it would be also assessed as A-class enterprise of Export Administration for more facilitation measures. Therefore, TrustTag insists on paying tax with honesty and integrity, in order to create a healthy trade and export environment for our respected customers consistently.

 

The defects of washing on RFID Source Tagging

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Still remember we are talking about the basic information about RFID on my last chapter? What is RFID? You exactly got it, it’s Radio Frequency Identification. We talk about what it composes of, how it works and the most important is: why it works better than traditional barcode. On the last paragraph, we mention that: The RFID chips are loaded with electronic information. Today we would like to talk about if washing workable on RFID Source Tagging.(only refer to pocket label here)

Source tagging is not strange to us: it’s the application of delivering sew-in soft labels from tag factory to apparel manufacturers. Then, the apparel manufacturers sew the tags to the clothes during the sewing production. The last step is from the apparel manufacturers to customers store with the sew-in labels on the apparel. Obviously, the streamline tag factory-apparel manufacturers-customer stores saves the time of not sewing the tags to the apparel in the retail stores. RFID Source Tagging shares the same streamline, the only difference is that the RFID pocket labels are with RFID chips inside.

So what’s the defects of washing on RFID Source Tagging?

Firstly, we need to know the washing process of the apparel factories. There are some main types of apparel washing which share some main points during the washing process for the clothes: A lot of water, additive agents, special elements, high temperature at lasting time.

Secondly, based on the definition of RFID, we know that the RFID pocket labels are with the RFID chips which are loaded with electronic information. Usually speaking, the RFID chips not allowed to be immersed inside the water for long time although we say that the RFID chips are water-proof and satin-proof. When the RFID labels are splashed or dropped by water, it won’t have any affects on the RFID chips and it’s still workable. However, it’s still under a certain range. After the apparel factories sew in the RFID pocket labels to the clothes, the clothes need to be under washing process and it’s not what we understand about the water-proof. It’s not little water but mass water inside washing machine and rolling at high speed with different additive agents and lasting a certain time over 15minutes at least.

Though there are pocket labels that are specially made with anti-water function, the RFID chip inside the labels are still easy to be affected by the high temperature and corrosion at a certain lasting time. It’s just like the cellphone we use everyday, if it’s splashed or dropped by rain or unexpected water, the cellphone is still workable. But if you immerse the cellphone inside the water for some time, the electronics will be destroyed, too.

Washing process is not good for the RFID Source Tagging and it will damage the electronics inside the RFID chips to some extent. We know that the washing process is necessary for the apparel factories not only for the function, colors or safety. What we can suggest is that to put the process of sewing RFID pocket label after the washing process in the apparel factories.

 

The ‘S’ and ‘W’ of hot-melt adhesive coating and ultrasonic cutting on Eas Pocket Label Tag

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Eas pocket label tag is known as one of the security products to be used on garment clothing for retail stores anti-theft. The specialty of such kind of security label tag that different from normal hard tag is that it is more suitable for source tagging that to be tagging at source of manufacturing, and most importantly, cost-effective.

The security label tag is with Eas alarming soft label coated inside with fabric pocket, to be sewn on clothes. And how to make the alarming sensor soft label being coated with the fabric pocket? The normal and traditional production technics of the Eas pocket label tag is hot-melt adhesive coating on the fabric with the sensor alarming soft label.

Hot-melt adhesive glue is a kind of glue that does not have harm on the environment, and the glue is solid state in ordinary temperature, like massive, layer, strip or granular, which makes it convenient for easy package, storage, transport and usage. Moreover, when the glue is being hot-melt to coating on fabric, it can fastly stick and coat when the glue is cooling and curing. This makes the hot-melt adhesive glue quite fit for auto production line with high manufacturing efficiency. Because of these advantages of the hot-melt glue, therefore it’s widely and mostly used for Eas security pocket label tag’s manufacturing.

While at the same time, using hot-melt adhesive for security pocket label tag coating also has its own defects.

  1. Not great heat resistance and not strong enough adhesiveness; Have high requirement on hot-melting and coating equipment.
  2. Some of the hot-melt adhesive glue will easily turn to yellow when temperature is over 30℃, and it will be yellowing the fabric as well if in this case.
  3. The fabric can be wrinkle during hot-melt adhesive coating, thus the high requirement on coating equipment.
  4. The hot-melt adhesive coating fabric can be too stiff for sewing machine needle to pass through and has certain damage on sewing needle.
  5. Coating cost is a bit too high to manufacture with hot-melt adhesive glue.
  6. The fabric material will easily stick on the cutter because of the glue.

Due to the above listed defects of using hot-melt adhesive glue for security pocket tag coating, security pocket tag manufactures can receive oftenly claims from garment factories for not easy for sewing needle to pass through the pocket tag or from garment retailers that the yellowing on the fabric making their new clothes with stains and so on.

Based on the above facts and situation, security tag supplier has found out another better solution to solve the problems——Ultrasonic cutting technics.

Ultrasonic cutting is totally different from traditional cutting. Ultrasonic cutting is to use the power of ultrasonic transducer to heat and melt the cutting fabric material so fast as for cutting off. So ultrasonic cutting does not need sharp cutter edge or very strong pressure, and will not break or damage the cutting fabric edge. In this case the cutting sealing edge on the fabric will not have rough selvage, creases, silk running or laddering and so on.

Another big advantage of ultrasonic cutting is that, it fuses the fabric cutting part and automatically seals the cutting edge quite well when cutting on the fabric, avoiding fabric sealing edge turning loose. What’s more, the fabric material will not stick on the cutter even after ultrasonic fusing, which in some way to improve the cutting efficiency. And clothing factories do not need to worry about the damage on sewing machines needle when sew the label tag on.

The manufacturing efficiency is much higher with ultrasonic cutting technics comparing to the hot-melt adhesive coating so it’s now widely used by security tag manufactures. Ultrasonic cutting manufacturing can increase the production speed, expand production capacity and most importantly, highly reduce cost.

 

Meet TrustTag at ISC WEST 2018 in Las Vegas

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Dear Customer,

As ISC WEST (The International Security Conference & Exposition) is taking place soon in Las Vegas, NV, USA. We hereby sincerely invite you to visit our booth#21135 at the SANDS EXPO CENTER on April 11-13, 2018.

Since the company’s founding in 2004, TrustTag has focused on solving the problem of retail theft with various solutions while anticipating the needs of retailers. Leading retailers worldwide have been using TrustTag’s innovative and high quality EAS&RFID retail security products to help decrease shrinkage, enhance inventory management, and improve efficiency as well as customers experience. What’s more, by taking advantage of TrustTag’s Source Tagging solution, retailers will be able to protect and keep track of their merchandise throughout the supply chain.

Interested in attending the show and learn more about our solutions? Please click here to register for a FREE Expo Pass offered by TrustTag today. We look forward to meeting you at the show to communicate face to face soon!

Sincerely,

Simon Shi(President)

TrustTag

 

First simple look at Source Tagging

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Comparing to traditional tagging and recirculation of reusable hard tags, today we are more attracted by source tagging solution in Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS), which emerged like 20 years ago. Source tagging solution is the process of embedding security label into any packaging or into the merchant itself at the source of manufacturing to protect the item from shoplifting at retail places.

Source tagging now is widely used in apparel & fashion accessories, electronics, food & beverage, health & beauty for the most part, and some other categories. And it will continue to expand and increase focus in the near future for loss prevention.

Now you still have no idea about how source tagging works in loss prevention? No worry, let us explain more.

Source Tagging is the process of dispatching the EAS security tags or labels from tags manufacturer to the point of merchandise manufacturer, for example, garments, cosmetics, electronics, food, beverages and so on. The source tag will be embedded into the item itself during manufacturing at the sourcing place. Completed merchandise with source tag is shipped and dispatched at the stores and being placed on sales floor. Throughout all this process, retailers can reduce in-store labor costs incurred from applying security labels or hard tags inside the store and get complete reliability of the merchandise tagging.

To catch up with the development, TrustTag has devoted itself to source tagging solution for retail loss prenvetion to help retailers increase sales, solve shrink issues, and optimize store labor.

Wanna know more on retail source tagging, please follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook Page.

Holiday Notice


TrustTag office will be closed during Chinese New Year Holiday Feb.11-22, 2018. If you need anything, just leave a message and we will get in touch with you as soon as we are back from the holiday. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Wish you good fortune in the new year of 2018!

How Powerful Big Data Can Be to Retailers

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New Retail. New Ideas

Starting from the 18th centuries, the way that how people use energy resources to drastically improve the efficiency has marked each industrial revolution. Coal along with the development of the steam engine, played central roles in the First Industrial Revolution. And it was oil and electricity to creat mass production in the Second Industrial Revolution. When it comes to the Third Industrial Revolution, we can think of nuclear energy, but it was also known as the Digital Revolution, in which internet just debuted in digital world and made the world connected.

We are now under the influence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which builds on the Digital Revolution by emerging technology breakthroughs in numerous fields like robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and the Internet of Things. And for most of these, they rely a lot on one thing-big data, which is also regarded as the new form of “energy resource” in the new industrial revolution.

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, which has established the biggest e-commerce platform in China, used to tell a joke in his speech, “Do you know women living in which provinces in China have the biggest bra sizes and which provinces have the smallest in average? I know them all!” Beyond questions, other than this, Ma knows much more private things because Alibaba has the biggest database in China that has recorded the shopping habits of 500million users for over 10years.

Despite of the joke, Alibaba actually dig this deeper according to their database and found a curious trend: Women who bought larger bra sizes also tended to spend more online. As a result, Alibaba was able to target and analyze on different spending power and do better on tailored offers.

Another interesting story would be Walmart’s sales on diapers and beer, between which, there was a positive correlation when they analyzed the sales data. After some research, Walmart found out why. A man who was asked by his wife to buy a pack of diapers on his way home from work, would always fetch a pack of beer for himself to enjoy and relex on the couch after the long day, forgetting about the noise from the babies for a while. Seeing that, Walmart move the beer next to the diapers, and even make them a combo package for a better deal. As a result, the sales of both increased by 35%.

Other than the internal data, many retailers could also take advantage of external data to adjust their strategy. For example, when they find out there are hot keywords of some candies or hand spinner on twitter, facebook, instagram, retailers would increase the stock and put them in obvious shelf. Likewise, they would also adjust the supplies of some products according to the weather and traffic reports.

As for above examples, retailers are analyzing simple data to help with the sales. Still, they are just the tip of an iceberg, because the data they could use can be even more high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety. That is the so called big data, which is information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that enable enhanced insight, decision-making, and process automation. For retailers, big data will definitely help optimize supply chain logistics, improve store layouts, customize recommendation, improve customer experience and boost the sales in the end.

So how can retailers obtain more valuable data on their own? Why not start with getting TrustTag’s RFID tags to the products and making them smart throughout the whole process. The efficiency will be highly improved with the RFID technology due to location-based data, smarter inventory checking and faster check out process(TrustTag is also offering Self-Checkout Solution for retailers). If you are using our RFID tags for Source Tagging, you will even be able to keep track of the products from the factory, through distribution, warehouse and finally to the sales floor as our RFID tags will obtain more and more information in the process of source tagging. And the more the data are used, the more valuable and powerful they will become!

TrustTag EAS&RFID Tags

If you are interested in learning more about retails in the new era, please stay tuned for upcoming articles in our series of “New Retail, New Ideas”, which will explore details of specific technologies in new retail.

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