According to National Retail Federation (NRF), the total value of retail returns in 2024 was expected to reach $890 billion, equating to 17% of all merchandise sales in the US – an increase from 15% in 2023. The same report finds that 93% of retailers believe retail fraud and other exploitative behavior is a significant issue for their business.

The threat of returns and fraud attempts within the industry is nothing new. However, with numbers continuing to grow, retailers are understandably concerned. They must take swift action to mitigate the damage caused by both. Deploying the right technology, brands can effectively manage returns to maximize resale speed and ensure seamless experiences for both customers and in-store associates.

Managing Returns

Returns can be costly to a business and leave a huge impact. And this isn’t limited to the US. According to reports, in the UK, 11% of all returns in 2024 were from ‘serial returners’ – frequently buying and returning items – causing returns to reach a new tipping point, costing the industry £27 billion last year. A global challenge, the returns dilemma causes issues for retailers when slow reverse supply chains disrupt the operational effort behind returned items. Products often get lost or delayed, with poor visibility of stock completely disrupting the chain. The longer it takes for retailers to get products back onto the shop floor, the lower the item’s resale value. In some cases, items cannot be resold at all. Ultimately, the faster retailers can push their products through the return supply chain, the sooner they can be sold – and the better the sale price. 

Deploying RFID within stores with the correct order management systems (OMS) enables retailers to accurately track returned items. Item-level RFID provides brands with complete visibility of all products, including returned items. By reactivating tags when items are returned, retailers can accurately view products travelling through the supply chain. This visibility allows brands to see where products go missing, and where inefficiencies lie. In response, they can optimize the reverse supply to ensure items are returned to the shop floor quickly, maximizing new sales opportunities on returned products.

Taking this one step further, retailers can turn returns into additional sales opportunities, through clienteling. Teamwork Commerce’s clienteling tools, powered by Endear, utilizes data-driven CRM to offer seamless communication with clients, with the ability to provide product recommendations through customer purchase history. When customers return products in-store, retailers are presented with an additional interaction with consumers. Clienteling technology, implemented with mobile POS systems, equips retailers with useful information to turn in-store customer returns into sales opportunities off the back of creating a more personalized and enjoyable shopping experience – also strengthening customer relationships. Ultimately, retailers can benefit from not only creating efficient streamlined returns, but they can use these interactions to drive additional revenue from new sales.

Managing Fraud

Returns can feel messy and chaotic, but retailers need to remain vigilant, with the threat of returns fraud remaining a prominent issue within the industry.

When implemented with Point of Sale (POS) solutions, RFID technology can also help navigate in-store fraud attempts. Retailers who have adopted RFID into their operations will have all products marked with small, readable tags. When items are brought back for return, associates can check the tag to determine the origin of the product – where it was purchased from, and whether it has simply been lifted from a shelf without purchasing at all. The data within the tags can also show exactly when the item was purchased to ensure it was within the returns timeframe and speed up the process while detecting and mitigating any fraud attempts.

The Takeaway

To embrace 2025 in full force, it’s important that retailers take control of their returns process – and remain vigilant to fraud attempts. Implementing item-level RFID with the right CRM platform can empower brands to navigate this issue, maximizing opportunities around returns and minimizing successful fraud attempts.

To learn about how Teamwork Commerce’s solutions can help your retail brand navigate busy return periods and fraud spikes, get in touch today.

With evolving customer expectations, the rise of omnichannel shopping habits, and ongoing supply chain challenges, today’s retail landscape has become more complex than ever. To seamlessly manage their retail ecosystems, brands need to integrate their offline and online shopping platforms, gain real-time inventory visibility, and tailor customer experiences – all while controlling costs and minimizing losses. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology emerges as a transformative solution that simplifies operations by enhancing accuracy, efficiency, and security.

What is RFID? How Does it Work?

In simple terms, RFID technology uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags. An RFID system consists of a radio transmitter – a tag – a receiver, and a transponder. When triggered by an electromagnetic interrogation pulse from a nearby RFID reader device, the tag transmits digital data back to the reader, identifying its presence.

Unlike traditional barcode readers, which require line-of-sight scanning, RFID can facilitate bulk scanning and real-time inventory updates. This eliminates human errors, improves stock replenishment, and enhances supply chain efficiency by delivering unmatched accuracy and speed in real-time.

The Benefits of RFID

RFID technology delivers threefold benefits for retailers, optimizing inventory management, enhancing customer experiences and reducing retail losses:

1.) Simplifying Inventory Management

As omnichannel retail continues to grow, precise and efficient inventory management has become crucial. Traditional manual inventory processes are often slow and susceptible to errors, leading to stock discrepancies, delays, overstocks, and stockouts. These inefficiencies can harm both the customer experience and a retailer’s bottom line.

Providing real-time inventory tracking, RFID can significantly improve inventory visibility and accuracy across multiple locations such as warehouses and stores. As a result, brands can reduce stock discrepancies, conduct instant stock audits, automate replenishment, and maintain optimal inventory levels. This allows retailers to ensure relevant products remain in stock at all times without overstocking inventory.

Teamwork Commerce’s RFID-Powered Stock Counter App streamlines the stock count process, providing real-time visibility into inventory status and allowing retailers to make more informed decisions based on real-time stock information.

2.) Enhancing the Customer Experience

From streamlining operations and ensuring on-time deliveries to enhancing convenience, RFID enables brands to fulfill core customer expectations. More importantly, retailers can use this technology to address pain points and offer an exceptional shopping journey.

Long checkout lines and delays often drive customers away or push them toward online shopping. To counteract this, retailers can deploy RFID self-checkout. Teamwork Commerce’s RFID-Powered Self-Checkout solution allows customers to quickly place items in a designated area where the system immediately scans RFID tags without the need to scan each item individually. This allows customers to swiftly complete the checkout within seconds while significantly increasing the number of transactions completed during operating hours.

One of RFID’s most impactful benefits is its ability to empower staff to tailor customer experiences by using real-time, data-driven insights into customer buying patterns and shopping behaviors. This allows retailers to make relevant and tailored recommendations, guiding customers to items they’re looking for, or products that are relevant to them. At the same time, RFID also simplifies omnichannel offerings such as Buy Online, Pickup In-store (BOPIS) and curbside pickup to ensure faster order fulfillment and improve convenience and customer satisfaction. Studies have also previously indicated that RFID adoption allows retailers to expand their omnichannel offerings and enhance customer satisfaction.

3.) Reducing Shrinkage and Improving Security

Retail shrink is an ongoing challenge for retailers, costing brands billions annually. Theft, misplacement, and fraud are some of the main reasons resulting in retail shrink. RFID solutions can help mitigate these losses by tracking high-value items in real-time, triggering alerts for unauthorized movement, and improving theft detection. Unlike traditional security systems, RFID tags remain active throughout the product’s lifecycle, enabling retailers to track individual items throughout the supply chain.

RFID’s Growing Prominence

The role of RFID is only going to become more critical in 2025 and beyond. The question today isn’t whether retailers are using RFID; it is to what extent they’re leveraging the potential of the technology. Those who deploy RFID-powered solutions from their supply chains to physical stores can create an integrated retail ecosystem, flowing with seamless real-time communication.

Looking to understand how your business can better leverage RFID? Get in touch.

While the idea of Artificial Intelligence (AI) took the world by storm in 2024, the follow-through didn’t exactly land how many might have anticipated. With so much still to learn about the technology, many brands encountered a number of challenges in executing its deployment. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the AI takeover hasn’t quite materialized yet across retail. 

However, as the industry settles into 2025 with more realistic expectations around the role that AI can play in technology implementation, the power of artificial intelligence is still clear for all to see. Its capability to help brands personalize the in-store customer experience can transform a retailer’s operations, especially with the right foundational technology already in place.

Data Data Data

AI is only as useful as the information it receives. The more accurate data fed into AI systems, the better its analytical capabilities can perform. In today’s retail environment, which is reliant on a range of technologies across the entire retail ecosystem, accurate data should not be hard to come by.

From Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) measuring inventory levels in the supply chain to Order Management Systems (OMS), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Point of Sale (POS) technologies tracking customer journeys, preferences and transactions, many retailers already have these solutions deployed within their operation.

With access to this data, an AI model can receive a significant amount of reliable information that can be utilized by retailers to create actionable outcomes that produce highly tailored experiences.

Creating a Personal Touch

Once the data challenge is overcome, retailers can feed as much information as necessary into an AI model that processes data and presents it back to retail associates in a digestible format.

The right model can create natural language summaries that cover a range of retail touchpoints, including current inventory levels, sales trends, and other important metrics. Importantly, these reports can be shared with staff to better inform them of evolving product trends and customer interests.

This provides shop floor staff with the ability to handle any customer enquiry, instantly. Better yet, with artificial intelligence capable of leveraging data to learn about previous trends and accurately forecast future ones, it can be used to make on-the-spot recommendations to customers based on their own personal preferences. While it might be a first-time interaction on the shop floor, the technology will make customers feel like the retailer has known them for years. They’ll feel valued, with their shopping needs met. This significantly enhances sales opportunities and encourages customer retention.

AI Will Arrive

2024 showed us that the world isn’t quite ready for AI to transform retail as we know it. However, it is ready to assist with small integrations that assist retailers in daily tasks – such as managing inventory or personalizing in-store experiences.

As we learn more about the technology, these integrations will be bigger, faster and even more accurate. But for now, AI is already bringing value to retailers as an add-on to existing technology stacks. 

To find out more about how Teamwork Commerce can help your retail brand integrate AI, get in touch today.

“New Year, New Me” – the phrase that many enter January with, motivated to make some form of positive change for the year ahead. For retailers, it’s more than a mantra, it is a mindset to evolve to cater to changing consumer needs and keep up with market trends. January has flown by and retailers have already started to work on their priorities for 2025.

From leaning on the potential of advanced RFID solutions to incorporating AI into wider retail operations, in our latest blog we discuss four key resolutions for retailers in 2025 to thrive in the new year.

Huge Focus on Advanced RFID

In 2025, significant focus is being placed on leveraging advanced RFID to streamline different parts of the retail ecosystem. From optimizing inventory and stock management to elevating in-store experiences and personalization, brands are harnessing RFID to drive efficiency, automation, and innovation.

Another major focus for retailers is integrating RFID technology at checkout. By improving both speed and accuracy, RFID streamlines transactions, reducing wait times and enhancing customer convenience while boosting efficiency.

Meanwhile, with returns and retail fraud increasingly becoming a challenge for brands, the industry is navigating ways to use RFID technology to address the challenges by leveraging its real-time tracking capabilities.

Teamwork Commerce uses RFID technology to improve retail operations and the customer experience. From our RFID Stock Counter App that enhances inventory visibility and accuracy to RFID-Powered Self-Checkout technology, retailers can leverage Teamwork Commerce’s RFID-enabled solutions to transform their business processes and enhance customer experiences.

Expanding the Use of AI

Another key priority for retailers in 2025 is to expand the use of AI to streamline their operations and automate processes that were previously manual tasks. After making significant strides in 2024, AI’s role in retail will only grow, driving efficiency across customer interactions, inventory management, and overall business strategy.

While AI is becoming increasingly popular in the industry, there are concerns about the technology disrupting jobs in the sector. However, it is critical to understand that AI should be leveraged to empower humans and not replace them. Brands that use AI to make human jobs simpler can better enhance the shopping experience while delivering the personal human touch that customers crave.

To empower its customers with AI, Teamwork Commerce is working in partnership with Google Cloud to develop new generative AI features in its industry-leading mobile Point of Sale (POS) and Order Management System (OMS). By enabling retailers to leverage AI in tandem with wider retail technologies such as RFID, Mobile POS, and OMS – Teamwork Commerce aims to ensure brands take a holistic approach to their technology adoption to drive long-term benefits.

Omnichannel: A Priority for 2025

In 2025, with the increased popularity of hybrid shopping models such as Buy Online, Pick-Up In-Store (BOPIS), retailers, who haven’t yet, must focus on weaving their physical stores with online shopping platforms to create a holistic shopping environment for customers.

Customer shopping journeys are becoming more complex every year, and brands need to understand how shoppers interact across different shopping platforms. This can help them create more meaningful strategies and shopping experiences that resonate with their customers, ultimately increasing consumer loyalty in the long term.

The Teamwork Commerce Mobile POS technology allows retailers to weave their online and offline retail platforms together to create a holistic shopping experience for customers. Associates can have access to customers’ online purchase history and personalize their in-store interactions, delivering a top-tier customer experience.

Filling the Gap in eCommerce  

With evolving consumer behavior, many shoppers like associates to assist them in their shopping journey. However, not all of them prefer visiting in-store. However, not many online platforms offer customer agents to offer personalized assistance. In 2025, retailers have an opportunity to fill this gap. From doing virtual walkthroughs to deploying online agents to help customers seamlessly make purchases online.

Brands that aim to deploy online agents to improve their e-commerce experience can integrate them with the cutting-edge Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The tech allows retailers to create a single source of information for every individual customer, enabling consistent visibility of every shopper. This can help e-commerce agents analyze customer purchasing habits across sales channels and make better decisions and recommendations.

Final Recommendation

As 2025 unfolds, retailers need to be strategic about their technology choices. The market is flooded with options, making it crucial to evaluate solutions carefully. To ensure they deploy the right technology that delivers significant return on investment (ROI), retailers must seek live demos, verify vendor credibility, and partner with IT experts who have a proven track record in the industry. 

Looking for help with navigating the right retail solution? Get in touch.

The festive period has been and gone once more but the busy day-to-day of the retail world continues. Moving into the New Year presents a slight shift in attitudes towards the in-person shopping experience. According to recent findings from popular UK brand, The Perfume Shop, 72% of shoppers often seek additional information and services in-store. Likewise, the demand for visiting stores is also reflected in most customers’ weekly shopping habits, with almost 40% of UK consumers now visiting non-food stores once a week.

With brick-and-mortar stores continuing to remain popular for shoppers, retailers are turning to innovative retail technologies such as Mobile POS and omnichannel services to further enhance their in-store offerings to customers. Creating the ultimate customer experience will be crucial in keeping up the momentum of excelling sales on the shop floor.

With the popularity of bricks and mortar shopping continuing to prevail in the retail scene, what can retailers do to set themselves apart from the competition when it comes to the in-person shopping experience? And how are retail technologies paving the way for a modernized future in brick-and-mortar stores?

Providing the Best of Both Worlds

The influence of online shopping has had an impact on the development of the in-store experience. For bricks and mortar retailers to continue to compete with the fast pace of eCommerce, they must be able to emulate the speed and convenience of online shopping. Online, visitors can complete transactions in seconds, and have instant visibility of product availability. The challenge for online sales is that customers don’t immediately receive their product. If physical retailers can replicate the seamlessness of online shopping, they have the added benefit of also handing customers their desired items right away.

With the popularity of shopping in stores on the rise, a reliable and efficient payment process is crucial, in the second quarter of 2024 it was reported that 66% of customers opted for payment through Apple Pay or other mobile POS payments in stores or restaurants. Introducing innovative tech in stores, such as Teamwork Commerce’s Mobile POS solution, can allow retailers to create a speedy and smooth checkout service. Moreover, customers can have total access to flexible payment options anywhere in-store for a convenient and accessible shopping experience.

Likewise, to replicate the visibility of stock of online shopping in stores, retailers utilizing Mobile POS combined with Teamwork’s RFID stock counter app have access to regular reporting to keep track of inventory performance and consumer shopping trends.

These technologies ensure retailers have complete control over their whole supply chain and full visibility to modify inventory levels across the whole channel at any time. With immediate visibility of stock in-store associates can also share these insights with consumers. Therefore, customers receive accurate, up-to-date information when placing orders in-store or online, creating streamlined and reliable sales opportunities that leave customers feeling satisfied.

The Building Blocks of Customer Relationships

To effectively build a positive relationship with customers and keep up with the increasing demands of in-store foot traffic, retailers need to invest in an omnichannel strategy that customers can rely on. Teamwork’s advanced Omnichannel Order Management System (OMS), creates a streamlined experience to keep up with any customer’s busy schedule.

By utilizing this technology, retailers can offer services such as Buy Online, Pick up In-Store (BOPIS) and Buy Online, Return In-Store (BORIS) to create a prompt way for customers to collect and return items with little to no effort. Recent findings have also revealed that features such as BOPIS are expected to make up nearly 20% of all eCommerce spending by 2027. Retailers must ensure a diverse shopping experience across the board. Whether a customer is browsing in-store, trying on products or choosing to use features such as BOPIS, customers value brands that can cater to their shopping needs and enable high-quality experiences.

Additionally, streamlining operations, and implementing omnichannel services in-store can help take the pressure off in-store associates and allow them to focus on providing top-tier customer service. In 2024, 88% of customers think customer service is more important than ever. Therefore, for brands to continue to not only entice new customers but also build rapport with loyal ones, customer service needs to be at the forefront of any in-store retail strategy.

The Power Of In-Person Experiences

The in-person experience is becoming a pivotal part of a customer’s shopping journey. For many retailers, the growth of in-store shopping has led to brands needing to pull out all the stops to create memorable experiences. In particular, retailers have started introducing immersive experiences inside their stores, brands such as Acne Studios, Moose Knuckles and ASICS have started redefining their retail space to encourage engagement and provide a unique experience for customers.

However, to fully embrace the new era of in-person shopping, retailers must incorporate reliable retail technologies to accompany these immersive experiences. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms enable retailers to analyze customer preferences and behaviors. In doing so, brands can tailor discounts and promotions that resonate with shoppers, creating a truly bespoke experience that drives sales while encouraging customers to interact with brands and drive product purchases.

 From this data, retailers can also heighten a customer’s in-person shopping experience by recommending products based on browsing history or purchases made online or in-store. This personal approach allows store visitors to feel valued by brands and encourages customer loyalty.

Is Retail Heading Back to Bricks?

The in-store resurgence is continuing to help the retail industry evolve in 2025. Prioritizing in-store interactions as well as customer service will be key for retailers, so to ensure consumer satisfaction, modernizing the in-store experience is vital. Retail technologies such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Omnichannel Order Management Systems (OMS) can open doors of opportunity for brands to go the extra mile for their customers.

Looking to create the ultimate in-store experience for your customers? Get in touch here.

From upscaling self-checkout solutions to increasing integration of AI in retail, 2024 witnessed a whirlwind of transformative retail technology adoption. It was a busy year for retailers, and tech innovation and integration within the industry will only continue to grow as 2025 progresses.

As we settle into the new year, retailers need to re-evaluate their priorities to keep up with the evolving retail landscape. In this blog, we take a look at four key considerations for retailers as they set their 2025 priorities… 

The Shift to Social Commerce

Social commerce is the buying and selling of goods or services through social media platforms, and its popularity has continued to grow over the past couple of years. Purchases made within the UK using social media platforms are expected to double in value from £7.4 billion to almost £16 billion by 2028. According to forecasts, 56% of UK users have made a purchase directly through social media, via a link on shoppable content or through an app. Therefore, as part of their New Year priorities, retailers must consider capitalizing on the potential of social commerce.

Having only launched in the UK in 2021, TikTok Shop is just one platform among many that has excelled within the social commerce space. Since launching, there have been over 200,000 active businesses on TikTok Shop in the UK. This has heavily influenced shopping behaviour on social platforms with a reported 61% of TikTok users having made a purchase either directly on TikTok, or online after seeing an ad on TikTok. Not only does this demonstrate the rapid rise of TikTok Shop, but it also shows its ability to drive repeat sales and impact consumer shopping habits.

Due to TikTok shop’s success in driving sales, retailers should consider focusing their efforts on prioritising their presence on social channels such as TikTok, pairing products with engaging content creation. Social commerce is only expected to continue to grow in 2025. Brands appear to have found the key to streamlining social transactions, and it is translating into a significant amount of eCommerce sales. A successful social commerce strategy will add another string to the bow for retailers looking to deliver effective omnichannel sales.

Creating diverse payment options

Over recent years, the ability to provide customers with multiple payment options and methods has provided retailers with a competitive edge. Today’s consumers have unique and evolving needs, and they demand payment options that allow flexibility. Whether paying through a secure link, using Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) options, or digital wallets such as Apple Pay and PayPal, shoppers are accustomed to completing purchases at their convenience. However, the industry has now reached a point where being able to offer diverse payment options isn’t an edge anymore, but a basic demand of customers that brands must cater to.

According to Statista, BNPL (buy now pay later) transactions within the UK are used by 50% (around 26.4 million) of adults. Meanwhile, options such as pay-by-link can simplify the transaction process for customers in-store. The Teamwork Commerce Pay-By-Link solution allows shoppers to pay for items through a secure URL link provided by a retailer. Retailers not only have the ability to conduct sales but can also process returns without the need for receipts – streamlining payment processes.  

Offering multiple payment systems can help brands deliver convenient shopping experiences, increasing shoppers’ likelihood of buying and returning. 

Strengthening omnichannel offerings

The ability to leverage multiple methods to make purchases has empowered customers to shop at their own convenience. Over recent years, customers have embraced hybrid shopping models and 2025 is only set to see further rise. 

The popularity of omnichannel retail offerings such as Buy-Online-Pick-Up-In-Store (BOPIS) and Buy-Online-Return-In-Store (BORIS) is growing. In the UK, these services are forecasted to surpass £30 billion in 2025. The growth of BOPIS and BORIS indicates that retailers must be ready to cater to the rising demand for omnichannel shopping experiences.

As part of their 2025 strategies, brands can prioritise adopting a holistic approach to simplify their omnichannel experiences. It is critical that retailers are able to eliminate friction and facilitate BOPIS and BORIS seamlessly, which is only possible with the deployment of integrated retail solutions that operate in real time.

AI integration

AI integration into retail operations has been on the rise. Both in 2023 and 2024, retail companies saw a two-digit growth of their sales compared to the respective previous years. In 2025, we anticipate that AI adoption in retail is only likely to increase further, transforming different areas – from supply chain operations to the customer experience.

From personalization to process optimization, brands must consider using AI to transform their retail operations in 2025. While AI is a game-changer in analyzing vast amounts of data, retailers must be able to feed accurate information for the technology to be able to deliver correct results. To achieve this, brands should consider pairing AI with other technologies such as RFID and real-time solutions that provide updated and accurate data.

The takeaway

As retailers plan their strategies for 2025, they must focus on popular trends such as social commerce, new payment methods, omnichannel and AI in their new year priorities. While many brands are already using some or all of these, those who can further advance in their utilisation of these can better cater to evolving consumer needs and thrive in 2025.

To find out more about how Teamwork Commerce can help your brand today in introducing retail technology to your everyday practices can help you succeed in 2025, visit here.