Activewear retailer Fabletics turns to radio frequency identification to boost inventory accuracy, efficiency and store performance. A winner of the first-ever Masters of Innovation Award at Manifest 2026, sponsored by SupplyChainBrain and Let's Talk Supply Chain.

Fabletics considers itself to be “a technology and fashion company combined,” says Katherine Dela Cruz, vice president of retail operations and training. It saw the adoption of RFID as key to achieving multiple goals: ensuring inventory accuracy, gaining labor efficiencies, and driving revenue.

Talk of implementing the technology began in 2018, when Dela Cruz and her team members began selling the concept to upper management. It turned out not to be a difficult task — “Our leadership understand what we would gain from it,” she says.

Fabletics had previously adopted the concept of a “license plate number” that went beyond individual SKUs, differentiated by style, color and size, to specific garments. Dela Cruz says the company already had 95% visibility of inventory, but knew it would need to deploy RFID to cover the remaining 5%.

It took a few years to figure out exactly what information about a garment needed to be encoded in an RFID tag, which had to be usable through every distribution channel, whether feeding warehouses or stores. To make that possible, the company had to ensure that the tags could be applied at the factory.

With the tag specifications in place, and the vendor chosen, implementation was rapid. The company was able to implement the technology at its 114 existing stores within six months, Dela Cruz says. Another 20 stores are slated to open in the coming year.

The tags do more than track a sale. When combined with sensor technology in the fitting room, they provide tracking information on customer conversion, and eliminate the need for a human staffer to manually scan items when a different size is requested for trying on.