Fashion E-Business Management National Institute of

Fashion Technology

National Institute of Fashion

and Technology
New Delhi

E-Commerce and its future with Virtual

Shopping Technology

Student
Himanshu Gupta

Mentor
Prof. Dr. Sibichan K. Mathew

Programme
Fashion E-Business Management

Dissertation submitted in fulfillment of requirements for the Fashion E-Business

Management Certificate Programme at National Institute of Fashion and
Technology.

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Acknowledgement
The present project report belongs to Fashion E-Business Management
Certificate Program with National Institute of Fashion Technology, in New
Delhi. Throughout the progression of this course, many people contributed with
strong support and assistance in several ways. First and foremost, I would like
to express my appreciation to Professor Dr. Sibichan K. Mathew and Prof.
Manish Nangia, for coordinating this course and providing me with valuable
advice, insightful guidance and constructive feedback during this course. My
thanks are also extended to the all the teachers and guest faculties and industry
experts who taught us through out the course and helped us understanding the
concepts of E-commerce Ecosystem. I am particularly grateful for the guidance
by Mr. Abhishek Kapoor, Mr. Surojit Bose, Mr. Mohit Gopal, Mr. Vishesh Azad,
Mr. Anup Gulati, Mr. Lalit Chikker, Mr. Vijay Dua, Ms. Poorti Sangal.

New Delhi , November 30th 2016

Sincerely

Himanshu Gupta

Abstract
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The purpose of this thesis is to identify the properties of the internet that help e-
commerce companies to growth strategy which will exploits online business
activities based on first mover advantage, allowing incumbents to preempt
competition by gaining market share as fast as possible and generate positive
feedbacks. This project was developed to look at the connections between the
topics of social media and virtual shopping. The domains of technology and e-
commerce have created a fast-paced and fluctuating retail environment. Both
social media and virtual shopping are increasing in popularity and used across
the globe and are influential in how consumers shop virtually and in real time.
The research on social media and virtual shopping informs how the topics
impact one another and the larger retail market. Research that looks at the
connection between social media and virtual shopping can help companies
prepare to accommodate consumers in the new realm of where e-commerce
intersects with Virtual shopping. This project aims to add to this growing body
of research.

Degree
Fashion E-Business Management

Department
Fashion Management studies

Mentor
Prof. Dr Sibichan K. Mathew

Keywords-: Retail, online, networking, shopping, E-Commerce, technology E-

Commerce Growth Strategies, Augmented Reality, 3D, RFID, Kinect,
Hologram etc.

Subject Categories
E-Commerce | Fashion Business | Technology and Innovation | Augmented and
Virtual Reality

Author
Himanshu Gupta

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Table of Contents
Page No
1. Acknowledgement 2
2. Abstract 3
3. E-Commerce 5
4. Fashion Industry and E-commerce 9
5. Fashion and Mobile e-Commerce 11
6. Growth Strategy in E-commerce 12
6.1 Direct Relationship 14
6.2 Privacy, Personalization and Value 14
6.3 Create Utility 15
7. Future of Retail and Ecommerce in fashion 20
7.1 3D Scanning and Anthropometric Data Extraction 20
7.1.1 What is Kinect 21
7.1,2 Stages of scanning 22
7.1.3 3D Scanning, Retail and E-commerce 24
7.2 Virtual Fitting and Trial Room 25
7.2.1 Utility and Value 26
7.3 3D Photorealistic Avatar and Virtual Reality 29
7.4 Holography 32
7.4.1 Holographic Mannequin 34
7.4.2 Benefits 36
7.5 RFID Technology 37
7.5.1 RFID in inventory management and Distribution system 37
7.5.2 Item level RFID tagging 37
7.5.3 Distribution system using RFID 37
7.5.4 RFID for Data collection 38
7.5.5 The Benefits of RFID 38
8. Conclusion 39

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E-Commerce
The e-commerce sector has seen unprecedented growth in 2014. The growth
was driven by rapid technology adoption led by the increasing use of devices
such as smartphones and tablets, and access to the internet through broadband,
3G, etc., which led to an increased online consumer base. Furthermore, favored
demographics and a growing internet user base helped aid this growth. In terms
of highlights, the growth shown by homegrown players such as Flipkart and
Snapdeal and the huge investor interest around these companies displayed the
immense potential of the market. With the entry of e-commerce behemoths such
as Amazon and Alibaba, the competition is expected to further intensify.

The Indian governments ambitious Digital India project and the modernization
of India Post will also affect the e-commerce sector.
The Digital India project aims to offer a one-stop shop for government services
that will have the mobile phone as the backbone of its delivery mechanism. The
program will give a strong boost to the e-commerce market as bringing the
internet and broadband to remote corners of the country will give rise to an
increase in trade and efficient warehousing and will also present a potentially
huge market for goods to be sold.

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For India Post, the government is keen to develop its distribution channel and
other e-commerce related services as a major revenue model going ahead,
especially when India Post transacted business worth 280 crore INR in the
cash-on-delivery (COD) segment for firms such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and
Amazon. Both these projects will have significant impact on increasing the
reach of e-commerce players to generally non-serviceable areas, thereby
boosting growth.

Since the e-commerce industry is fast rising, changes can be seen over a year.
The sector in India has grown by 34% (CAGR) since 2009 to touch 16.4 billion
USD in 2014. The sector is expected to be in the range of 22 billion USD in
2015-16.

Sources Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), CRISIL, Gartner

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The e-commerce businesses will continue to attract investor interest. Several of
Indias blue-chip PE firms, which previously avoided investing in e-commerce,
are now looking for opportunities in the sector. The focus is mainly on ancillary
service providerscompanies involved in support functions ranging from
delivery, logistics and paymentswith investments largely driven by the
relatively lower valuations and smaller amounts of capital required.

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Fashion Industry and Ecommerce
The Indian retail industry witnessed a bolstered growth curve after the advent of
e-commerce and its impact on the fashion industry is very eminent. among the
several significant that the industry has witnessed in recent years. The fact that
businesses are embracing technology and innovation at a pace unfamiliar to date
is a testament to the countrys evolving retail market.

Sources: Technopack
E-tailing market at present is led by electronics category with a share of 45
percent followed by apparel and lifestyle that contributes 30 percent of the
market with the rest being captured by others.

The category split of e-tail is projected to remain same in 2020 with electronics
contributing to 44 percent of the total e-tail market in India followed by apparel
and lifestyle at 30 percent. Currently, menswear dominates the fashion and
lifestyle space with contribution of 52-54 percent followed by women
contributing to approximately 38-42 percent and contribution of kids ranges
from 5-10 percent. However, in light of increasing women in the workforce with
more financial independence, the share of women in e-tail is expected to
increase to 45-48 percent, whereas mens segment is expected contribute 45-47
percent, with kids section remaining constant around 5-10 percent.
This shift accounts to increase in women entering the workforce, which shall
lead to increased demand for different retail categories. More women will have
higher discretionary spending power. This can have an impact across multiple
categories (clothing, personal care and grooming, accessories, etc.)
In the Fashion industry the bounce rate is slightly lower than in other industries.
The reason for this is that people do not know exactly what they are looking for.
As a result, people will click through and look for other items.

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But the conversion ratio in fashion is very low compared to other branches. This
is because a lot of products can be found in other stores. Many customers will
look for the cheapest store and do their purchase there.
In fashion the return rate is much higher than in other industries. The main
reason for this is that clothes have different sizes, different fabrics, etcetera.
Offering the right size to consumers is a challenge and clothes that do not fit
form one of the main reasons for returning them.

Fashion is all about impulse purchases. Six fashion sales out of 10 occur on the
same day as the first visit on retailers websites. Existing purchasers may
represent just 13% of fashion retailers user count, but they account for over half
of the revenue. Users with four or more past purchases account for 22% of
revenue even though they make up less than 3% of the average sites users.

Source: Criteo, April 2015

In fashion, just because users purchase frequently doesnt mean they are loyal
quite the opposite. Indeed, heavy buyers show an even higher propensity to visit
several fashion retailer websites than casual customers. Given the sheer weight
of frequent buyers, there is tremendous value for fashion retailers in retaining
them and ensuring they dont go to the competition.

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Fashion and Mobile E-Commerce
It said mobile is set to become the dominant channel, with more than 500
million consumers already using phones. Smartphones will account for more
than 90 percent of handsets in the market by 2020. At the same time, it
estimated that around 45 million people in India transacted online in 2015,
representing only 14 percent of all those connected: This means there is a huge
opportunity for growth and the opportunity to incorporate new technology for
customer engagement, real-time data feedback, social engagement,
recommendations and 3-D fitting rooms.

The opportunity for Western fashion brands is large, the report said. Out of
Indias 240 million households, at least 50 million are aspirational global
consumers. The significant and accelerated desire for Western style and
culture that is driven by unprecedented access to the Internet and social media.

However, the trend is for more specialization, with brands selling lifestyle as
well as product online.

The fashion industry is moving to mobile faster than any other retail category,
with 33% of fashion purchases now coming from mobile devices. 43% use
multiple devices on the path to purchase, and many purchase on any device
(desktop, tablet, smartphone) or platform (app or website) at hand. Smartphones
are gaining ground against tablets everywhere, and fashion is leading the trend
with a larger piece of the mobile pie than other retail categories.
Source: Criteo, April 2015

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Growth Strategies in E Commerce
How to best connect our business to actual consumers and this is the biggest
challenge all over the world for B2B, B2C, for small businesses, for medium-
sized businesses or large enterprises in terms of connecting business to
customers. This idea of uncertainty of new technology to connect to the
customer, remember those days when people asked why I need a website but
if we sort of fast forward to where were at today do we think social media is
going away and we might say okay Periscope is a fad or well see if Snapchat
really takes on but fundamentally people, individuals, customers connected to
one another with technology being the intermediary do we think that that is
going to go away, it sounds crazy to think that would go away.

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The fact that we are going to be more and more untethered connected and well
see a lot of that through mobile technology. Businesses are in Purgatory.
Purgatory is knowing with certainty that these things mobile, social,
augmented reality, virtual reality, 3d and other things have fundamentally
changed our business and yet we are not doing enough for everything about it.
This is the moment that we are fundamentally in most businesses as digital as
some of us may be, it is still philosophically from a marketing communications
connected standpoint to customers an area of purgatory.

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The Direct Relationship

We know that we as a brand new business, we have to connect every single day
in a better way and more profoundly to our customers more than our
competitors or theyll go away. It is basic truth. but theres this new war
happening for the direct relationship thats only been developed very very
recently and it is because of digital that this has come forward and this war that
brands and businesses are facing are not just with competitors its with
everybody in the value chain of what we actually offer to the customer. We
should own welcome to purgatory see the thing that most practitioners even the
ones who are hard for digital, ones like we dont get, is that every day we are
not trying to get a conversion believe it or not every day we are trying more
and more to build a direct relationship with our customer because its not just
our competitor was not able to get them but its everybody in the value chain
we see this from B2B, B2C, small, medium, large and become such a
competitive landscape, Its the only defending position we can have is to be
ultimately the person who has the direct relationship with your customer. We
into this world of the power of a direct relationship we see that when we own a
direct relationship and when we know our audience so intuitively we create
content that so relevant for them and connects them so powerfully they move
with us in a powerful way.
There is a mass mass audience in our niche and thats really what companies
like Google and the web the greater web have really shown us as brands. This
world now what were seeing is as a business to target a certain audience are not
even niche anymore that every audience through this connected technology is
now a mass. Whats amazing about this is the engine works really well. Figure
out who that audience is and trying to becoming part of that community so not
just trying to sell through social media and online we have to become a part of
that channel through content creation, direct relationships etc. etc.

Privacy, Personalization and Value

We are very much performance-based because of what we are doing the e-

commerce. The different phase of where someone is in purchasing( just
because we handle the e-commerce or on the Digital side it doesnt mean that
we dont have to be explicitly involved in making sure that wherever the
customer is in that component of it that theyre able to get value out of it and
this is where brands struggle.

The information and data we have been brought up in a world that has been
primarily driven by very linear data (email, phone number, Website accounts
and home addresses). But from last five years digital footprint is creating a

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higher level of information that transcends demographics and psychographics
and this by the way is the Splinter Theres been a tremendous diminishing value
in market research of demographics and psychographics because of this the
smartest businesses are figuring out how to target customers as actual
individuals now not just the demographics and psychographics of it and so now
we suddenly have a world where we can take this linear information and
combined it with this new digital footprints information but that sounds scary
and if we say that were going to do that suddenly we have to take privacy very
very seriously. Personalization and privacy should have a chasm between them
Privacys in the Lockbox its not to be touched. Personalization is my ability to
know the things were doing to create more value for our customers. We have to
connect all of those linear data points and digital footprints to create more
relevant opportunities for our customers. For example, we ve all heard this
small little company called Amazon. They have a price check app so we can
take a picture or scan the barcode or finger type the barcode of any product
from any store and the price check app will tell us the price of the product on
Amazon. With this app amazon know exactly whos having which product in
what store what part of the world, where they can see price variances etc. But
all of us are like bring it on, why, because whats happening is were getting
more value than the information that we are leaving to Amazon.

Create utility

The ability to create utility is probably the biggest opportunity space for any
marketer in the world today. Theres a reason why physical spaces are where
they are right if we have a physical store attached to our brand because thats
where foot traffic is. Theres a new real estate in town and that real estate is the
home screen of all of these screens and devices that we have in front of us right
now and as a brand new business that were trying to figure out how do we get
my brand to be so relative it actually sits on the home screen of peoples devices
and thats where the big digital gulp comes in because that sounds impossible
the data would say things like twenty-five percent of branded apps get
downloaded used once and never. What type of apps do we need? Apps that
provide value, apps that really are utility to our life and so the question then is
in a retailer can brand, create apps that arent just about this is where were
located, this is whats on sale this is how you can contact me. Can we create
something for the customers?

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DishTip is an idea that already exists that was tweaked to make it more relevant
to an audience and this is where we can win big.

DishTip helps you find and discover the best dishes on the menu at restaurants
to help you order the best food. I hate it because every restaurant is like a 7.6/10
or 3.8/5. It is the worst percentage ever, its not amazing and its not terrible It
tell us what the best dishes are in the physical location that were at. We can
imagine taking something that exists tweaking it and providing it as an
application a tool or utility that we could give to our customers.

For example, theres an app called SITORSQUAT and heres the way the app
works, its a wiki platform for public bathrooms so anybody can add to it we
can rate bathrooms 1 to 5 stars.

We can add a bathroom; we can ask for about them to be removed we can
comment on a bathroom. Itll tell us which bathrooms are handicapped
accessible, it will tell us which bathrooms have changing tables if we have small
kids, brought to us by the good people of Charmin, Procter &Gamble the
toilet paper company.

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This is another very emerging brands in the US, Help Remedies launched a
bandage package that aims to heal on a larger scale. The package is called,
"Help I've Cut Myself & I Want To Save A Life" but heres the utility it
contains the standard Band-Aids with a bone marrow donor registry kit.
The kit consists of a pamphlet, sterile cotton swabs and a postage-paid
envelope. This idea was initiated by Graham Douglas of Droga5(An
Online Advertising and Marketing Company). His identical twin brother
had leukemia and was saved by a donor. So it can save millions of
Leukemia patients lives.
its actually tools and functionality engage customers to build those direct
relationships. Their sales have skyrocketed to 1900% in few months.

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Lego another brand that creates a tremendous amount of traction.
With Lego a box kids be like can I do this I can I build whats in there and Lego
created these things called the digital box and the way the digital box works is
like this when we walk into the Lego store and we hold the Box up it starts
building whats inside the box using augmented reality 3d animation and so
we can actually see when we turn it around we ll see that which parts move
how big it is the little figurines to get those big figurines.

So again this box could have been the standard like a scan your VIP card and
get a 20-percent coupe-like every stupid thing that every retailer always does
but theyre actually solving problems and create a utility because digital
technology allows this. We dont always have to just advertise to our customers.
We actually want to build this direct relationship, if we actually want to
leverage with customers data we have to provide them with tools, whether we
re a pure-play digital Omni-channel traditional trying to be more digital we all
have this ability we have an ability to not just scream at people with ads and try
to pummel them with rebates and two-for-one coupons we have a newfound
ability to build this direct relationship in a profound way we have an ability
to leverage data and information to make the things that we re doing that
much more viable and reasonable and personable for people while protecting
their privacy in a very very serious matter. We have the ability to create utility
tools and applications and things that they would.

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Future of Retail and Ecommerce in fashion
How Technology and Fashion Industry is solving these above problems of
creating Direct Relationship with customers, give them more viable value for
the private data they give to the companies and create utility and do
marketing through the utility. The answer to all these questions can be
answered through the technologies listed below.

1. 3D Scanning and Anthropometric Data Extraction

2. Virtual Fitting and Trial Room
3. 3D Photorealistic Avatar and Virtual Reality
4. Holography
5. RFID Technology.

3D Scanning and Anthropometric Data

Extraction

Anthropometry is the study of human body. Anthropometric data are very useful
for designing, as part of the process for developing a design solution in different
areas. In the apparel industry, anthropometric data are an important component
for producing high quality garments. Garment fit, is one of the main factors in
the decision making of the customer. Different countries have undertaken
anthropometric studies for updating their sizing systems used for garment
design. Moving into the full cycle production, by adding more value in the
whole production chain of the garment production firms has become a necessity
in the last years. There are few firms working with their own brand for the home
market, but they use different garment sizing systems. So, it has become a
necessity, for Indian companies which operate in garment and footwear industry
to use Indian sizing system. Updating anthropometric data, will help garment
and footwear companies ensuring good quality for their products.

Most viable option for 3d Scanning and Anthropometric Data extraction right
now is through the RGB-D scanner which contains a RGB camera and a depth
sensor. The most popular RGB-D Scanner in the market is Microsoft Kinect.

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What is Kinect?
Kinect is a 3D camera that makes use of infra-red (IR) illumination to obtain
depth data, color images and sound. It is devised by Microsoft for X-Box. Later
Primesense (the company which designed Kinect) also released open source
drivers.

The system can measure distance with a 1cm accuracy at 2m and has a
resolution of 3mm at 2m. The default RGB video stream uses 8-bit VGA
resolution (640 480 pixels), but the hardware is capable of resolutions up to
1280 1024 (at a lower frame rate). The monochrome depth sensing video
stream is in VGA resolution (640 480 pixels) with 11-bit depth, which
provides 2,048 levels of sensitivity.

Kinect has an IR camera, RGB camera and a laser based IR projector as shown
in the figure above. The IR camera and the IR projector forms a stereo set with a
baseline of about 7.5cms. The IR projector projects a known pattern which is
read by the IR camera. The change in the pattern is observed to calculate the
depth of a pixel. As the IR camera does not interfere with the visual spectrum it
enables simultaneous capture of texture images.

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Stages of Scanning

Calibrate: The cameras are first calibrated to get their positions and
orientations with respect to each other. This will be explained later.

Capture: The person stands in front of the cameras and 3D images are taken. It
is made sure that the whole body is covered so that there are no holes when the
point cloud is generated.

Construct Point Cloud: A point cloud is a set of voxels which are captured in
the previous stage. To construct it, we back project every pixel in the image.
Since we know the depth at each pixel, we know exactly the 3D position of the
point.

Segmentation: The point cloud constructed above not only contains the person,
but also the background. The background is assumed to be quite far so that it
becomes easier to segment it out on the basis of its depth value. To make it more
rigorous, the person is assumed to have depth values within a certain band.

Remove Noise: Depth sensors such as Kinect are prone to measurement errors
that lead to sparse outliers which may corrupt the registration process. Hence,
these outliers must be removed from the point clouds before the registration
process.

Register Point Clouds: We now have many point clouds of the same person
captured from different viewpoints. These point clouds are registered using ICP
algorithm.

Extract the Measurement data: Measurements and features are extracted out
of the generated point clouds. The feature extraction system is based on the
descriptions of feature points and feature lines in the garment design literature,
handbooks, and standards (ASTM and ISO). The definitions are interpreted into
logical mathematic definitions, and finally coded into computer algorithm. In
this way, the body features can be correctly and uniquely found without
ambiguity. The theorem and methodology for feature identification are
primarily based on the image processing technique, computational geometry
and computer graphics.

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Different kinds of data extracted by (TC)2 3D Body Scanner

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3D Scanning, Retail and E-commerce

3D scanning booth can be installed at shopping centers and stores and customer
can get his/her measurements in couple of minutes.
After that user can find the best fitting clothes in nearby stores and on online
websites according to his/her body measurements.
Customers also can keep a track of their body measurements by visiting the
booths regularly.
So thats how brands can create the direct relationship with the customers and
give them value and create utility for them for future purchases and make them
loyal customer using 3D Scanning.

Virtual Fitting and Trial Room

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The Virtual Fitting and Trial solutions have gained importance in the last few
years in different areas of the fashion industry.

Virtual Fitting and Trial solutions simulate digitally the behavior of textiles onto
the human body. In this way, they allow a virtual
probe of cloth items onto digital human body models. 3D cloth simulation
engines are employed to determine precisely how the cloth item will behave on
the body.

The different parts of textile defining a piece of cloth are described as 2D

patterns (as it is the case for usual CAD solutions employed in cloth
manufacturing processes). For each part are specified all the required
characteristics of textile, such as for example thickness or elasticity. The
different parts are then placed in a 3D environment around human body and
stitched together. The 3D cloth simulation engine will then determine the
behavior of the so formed cloth item over the human body. Optitex and
Tucatech have introduced 3d virtual garment simulation software along with
the 2d cad pattern making software.

Virtual Fitting and Trial Solutions uses the same technology as 3d scanners but
with a touch Screen which works a mirror and a 3D Garment Simulation
Engine.

Users can try each dress without waiting for the dressing room.

Selected dress will be projected onto shoppers mirror image and allow
shoppers to virtually try on the clothes.

Integrated with Kinect, a motion sensing device, detects shoppers

movements and allows them to choose from a range of dresses by swiping
their hands horizontally.

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Utility and Value:

For small retailers with limited in-store display & warehouse space

Reduce rental by not having a huge storage place to physically store all items
with different sizes and colors.

In-store online catalogue

Shoppers may flip through the latest collection/best sellers

Encourage Try and Buy behavior

Allows shoppers to catch a glimpse on the virtual dress fitting and entices
them to physically try on the dresses they do not plan to try beforehand

Minimize the hassles of trying clothes physically. Clothes fitting could be

troublesome and time consuming

Minimize the long queue problem at the dressing room which might
restrain the shoppers desire to shop in the store

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3D Photorealistic Avatar and Virtual Reality
Similarly, after scanning the body using the Kinect and DSLR Cameras, 3D
Photorealistic Avatar can be created which will be used on e-commerce websites
sites to virtually simulates clothes and accessories on the avatar of customers
which will give them the experience of shopping to see themselves in different
outfit and fashion accessories at their tablets, mobiles and computers. These
scanners can be installed at various public places and shopping centers.

This will create a direct relationship of the user with the websites which also
give them value and create utility to try thousands of clothes available at
different websites.

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Sources Youtube.com

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Holography
A Hologram is a physical structure that diffracts light into an image. The term
hologram can refer to both the encoded material and resulting image.
A holographic image can be seen by looking into an illuminated holographic
print by shining a laser through a hologram and projecting the image onto a
screen.
Holograms have optical presence and spatial quality.
Holograms is based on the principle of interference. A hologram captures the
interference pattern between two or more beam of coherence light (i.e. laser
light). One beam is shone directly on the recording medium and acts as a
reference to the light scattered from the illuminated scene.

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Holographic Mannequin
The Holographic Mannequin is a real eye catcher and can be made interactive
by connecting to a Kinect and a touch screen panel.
Engaging customers and stopping power of holograms is far more than any
other Visual Merchandising methods.
These Holographic Mannequins can be used to delivering your welcome
messages., promoting special offers, in-store promotions or being used as
entertainment at special events, the multilingual virtual mannequin is the ideal
medium to deliver your message.

Retail stores, airports, offices, shopping malls and public buildings all over the
world are using the Virtual Mannequin to enhance the consumer experience and
increase sales by improving customer service in a unique and interactive way.

Using the Kinect mannequin can also imitate the customers gestures and can
also be used as virtual fitting rooms. Speech Recognition software and virtual
assistant like Siri and Cortana can also be used to answers with pre recorded
messages. These Mannequin can also be used to give compelling information
and drive conversions. They can also recognize VIP customers and identify the
demographic information using RFID loyalty cards provided to the customers.

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Benefits.
Ensure a consistent message is delivered to your audience.
Improve customer service
Re-deploy headcounts
Grab the attention of passers-by
Enhance the consumer/shopping experience
Create a point of differentiation vs. your competitors

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RFID Technology
Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, is an identification or tagging method
that is similar in function to a bar code on an apparel product.
RFID technology has three components: microchip tags that carry the data,
antennas that send the data, and readers that interpret the data. Products using
RFID technology carry a transponder made from a microchip attached to an
antenna. It can be very small but read distance performance will depend on size.
These tags can be placed in an apparel product without affecting its comfort or
look, for example, the tag might be in a seam or hem or in a paper carton label.
The range of RFID can go up to 20 feet.

RFID in inventory management and Distribution system

RFID labels are smart labels that can provide information for a number of
applications in the apparel supply chain. The tags can be read through
packaging and cartons without the line of sight necessary for reading barcodes.

Item level RFID tagging

The hanger-goods, such as dresses, pants, and jackets were then packed in slip
covers, while the stackable goods (e.g., sweaters and t-shirts) were filled in
cartons. Manufacturer receives ready printed and initialized paper faced RFID
tags and applies them to existing hang tags which is flexible and cost-efficient
way to tag at the source. RFID readers, installed in the outgoing goods area at
the logistics service provider, scanned the packed merchandise before it was
loaded on trucks for transport to distribution center. Once merchandise is tagged
at the source and shipped, its next part of call is the distribution center. Packed
in boxes or hanging on rails, it can immediately be checked against the Invoice.

Distribution system using RFID

The products are delivered in cartons or as hanger-goods as ordered by the

stores, and transported without storage at the logistics service provider. The
distribution center staff equipped the goods with Serial Shipping Container
Code (SSCC) tags and brought them to the outgoing goods area. At the
warehouse entrance of distribution center, RFID readers track the merchandise
as it came in. delivered products are registered, distinguishing stackable and
hanger goods. The data stored on the RFID transponders are read automatically
for each individual product. For hanger goods, the task of counting hangers is
eliminated. This allows quantity control of 100% of merchandise to take place
automatically at the warehouses.

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Fashion E-Business Management National Institute of
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RFID for Data collection

Intelligent Clothes Racks are equipped with an RFID antenna. Each time a
customer or employee removed a fashion item equipped with an RFID
transponder from the rack, the movement was automatically entered into the
merchandise management system. The moment the article was returned was
also registered. The time that lapsed before a customer returned an item to the
rack provides valuable information: If a customer put a blouse back on the
clothes rack after five seconds, she possibly did not like the material. If five
minutes went by, it is likely that the customer tried on the article. Smart Shelves
offers similar functionalities for stacked goods.

Customers profiling can also be done using these RFID loyalty cards.
These cards track the customers movement inside the store and time spent in a
particular section and with a particular article.
Customized offers and discount coupons can be provided to the customers
through previous RFID data.

The Benefits of RFID

Reduced out-of-stocks by 50 percent, sales volume and profits.
Improves customer experience and speeds up service.
Gives retailers and brands valuable information about the supply chain
and inventory as well as product consumption and cycle speed.
Enables production monitoring, planning.
Higher shipping accuracy. Reliable and fast goods receipt and shipping
process.
Minimize error in sorting, faster process.
Reduction in restocking efforts, reducing labor costs.
90 percent reduction in labor associated with inventory counts.
Reduction in receipt of counterfeit items.
Reduced employee theft and shoplifting through improved monitoring of
inventory movement.
Faster receiving and inbound processing.
Lost sales due to the inability to locate inventory are eliminated.
Since each product in a specific shipment has a unique identifier, quality
assurance and counterfeit prevention are enhanced.
Improved accuracy in picking and packing operations translates into the
proper fulfillment of purchase orders.
Better control over own supply chain management.

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Better way to profile the customers and his preferences.
Conclusion
The aim of this project was to examine how and why e-commerce companies
can achieve exponential growth rates in very short time periods. In this context,
the purpose of this study was to identify which properties of the internet and
virtual reality stimulate the scalability of online businesses, as well as to explore
the main drivers, tactics and consequences inherent to the creating Direct
Relationship, Utilities and providing Value to the customer for their private
data shared with the brand. The internet and the concept of e-commerce have
definitely revolutionized the retail industry along with consumer shopping
habits. In fact, e-commerce companies have been growing at a faster pace and
steadily increasing in size and reach.

Researching the correlation between E-commerce, Omni-channel retail and

Virtual Shopping will add to the research on these two topics. This information
will inform how each discipline can target their audience by using the survey
results to further expand both social media and e-commerce in beneficial ways.
These include improving visibility in the market place, increased traffic on retail
websites, and a potential for increased sales.

The intertwining of social media and online/virtual shopping places consumers

in an advantageous and hi-tech world that gives them opportunities to use their
social media skills to get the best possible experience with virtual and online
shopping. Using Kinect, Hologram and RFID as a tool for virtual shopping
will only increase sales for stores, raise awareness for both topics, stand out
against competitors, and provide up to date information for consumers.
E-commerce impacts the way we live, work, and shop. E-commerce influences
the way consumers are shopping, and potentially will become more significant,
technical, and beneficial for consumers in the future. The future brings vast and
incredible advances for E-commerce and virtually shopping for essentially all
consumers.

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