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Most of us have waited in a store while an associate goes to check the stock out back. Sometimes they return with the exact item you want and other times they come back empty-handed. Either way, you’re left waiting while the retailer works out what is actually available.
It’s a familiar experience, despite all of the investment in making shopping more convenient. Bain & Company has forecasted U.S. holiday sales of more than $1 trillion in 2026, with nearly 70 percent of this expected to come from stores. So, it’s worth asking how much of that opportunity depends on getting that interaction right.
If a store team can’t find the item that the customer wants, an accurate inventory count will only get you so far.
Look at availability through your customer’s eyes
Let’s imagine six units of a popular sweater – four of them are in the stockroom, one is in a fitting room and the other has been left on the wrong rack. The inventory system knows there are six units, but the customer who is browsing sees no items in their size. In this case, unless the customer asks a store associate, they will likely leave.
It’s for this reason that retailers need to consider what their reporting is telling them. A stock count is useful in measuring what is there, but it doesn’t tell you whether it is where it needs to be in order to sell. A retailer can be getting the count right while still struggling to make that stock available to customers.
Before taking reassurance from a seemingly strong accuracy figure, take the time to look at the products behind it. Particular sizes may be repeatedly missing from the sales floor or the same items could consistently be difficult to pick for online orders. These sorts of details can help you spot problems that the overall figures don’t show.
Remember what happens after checkout
In Radial’s April 2026 consumer survey, 36.5 percent of respondents said they would stop purchasing from a brand after a single cancelled online order. Retailers shouldn’t assume they’ll get another chance in these situations.
A lot of effort went into winning that order – the advertising worked, the product appealed, the customer completed checkout – but the sale fell through at the final step because nobody could find the item.This is a problem that sits well beyond the stockroom.
Customers aren’t interested in which system or department got it wrong, they just want to know why you accepted an order you couldn’t fulfil.
Ask what is taking so long
I’d encourage retailers to spend more time looking at what happens between confirming stock and getting it into a customer’s hands. Look at things such as how long a typical product search takes, how long empty displays stay empty and what happens after a staff member can’t find an item needed for an order.
When it comes to checking inventory, similar outcomes can have very different causes, whether it’s a delivery waiting to be processed, a misplaced item or a return awaiting inspection before it can go back on sale. Each needs a different response, so recording everything as an inventory issue makes it harder to fix the underlying problem.
According to McKinsey’s 2021 research, the benefits of RFID include increases of 1 percent to 3.5 percent in full-price sell-through and reductions of 10 percent to 15 percent in inventory-related labor hours. While these are older findings for RFID generally, rather than guaranteed results for every installation, they show the commercial opportunity in making better use of stock already purchased and reducing the time teams spend searching for it.
Give store teams something they can use
Items will move throughout the day, including between stock checks. Always-on RFID can help close that gap by automatically reading tagged items and providing updated information about their presence and location within the system’s coverage, without relying on staff to carry out each scan.
Going back to those six sweaters, knowing that four are in the stockroom gives an associate somewhere to start looking. Connected to replenishment software, that information can also help alert the team to a gap on the sales floor before another customer walks away.
Making this work means getting those updates to the people and systems that need it. An associate needs to be able to use the location information, replenishment alerts need someone to acton them and stock updates need to reach the systems accepting online orders.
For retailers considering the investment, those are useful places to start. Test whether items become easier to find, shelves are replenished sooner and more orders can be fulfilled, alongside measuring inventory accuracy.
The customer waiting by the rack simply wants their size, and RFID can help make sure the answer is a product in their hands, rather than another apology.
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