December 14, 2017
The customer is king: this is a principle most service providers and retailers would commit to. Musti Group, a Finland-based pet specialty retailer, has now acknowledged that their real kings walk on four paws and have a wet nose. Leveraging Smartrac’s advanced RAIN RFID technology, Musti has launched ‘Biscuit’, the world's first dog loyalty program.
Biscuit is also the name of the “smart” collar Musti offers to canine customers and, to some extent of course, to their owners. Utilizing Impinj’s Monza 5-based Belt inlays from Smartrac, Biscuit stores and recognizes individual dogs’ personal data such as their name and birthday, down to their favorite treat and shopping history.
The gadget is attached to the dog’s collar; when a dog wearing Biscuit walks into a store, Nordic ID RAIN RFID (UHF) readers recognize the dog, allowing the staff to give their four-legged customer a tailor-made, personalized service. To give the dog – and implicitly its owner as well – a five-star in-store experience, there is even a monitor at the shop entrance that will personally greet the dog.
Retail-ready inlays are the key
Smartrac is the exclusive inlay supplier used in the collar, while the Biscuit concept was developed through a joint effort by Musti Group, its advertising agency TBWA Helsinki and RFID reader solution provider Nordic ID Oy. The compact Smartrac Belt inlays are designed for item-level RFID tagging and can be used in several application areas, such as retail, logistics and supply-chain management. The individual antenna shape takes into account the RF requirements for close coupling.
"The additional sweet part with this innovative customer loyalty program concept is that it was done focusing – instead of on humans – on man’s best friend, the dog.” — Joachim Weckman, Area Sales Manager at Nordic ID.
Smartrac Belt inlays that use the Impinj Monza 5 IC are included in the officially approved RFID tags and inlays list for boxed electronics maintained by the RFID Research Center of the University of Auburn ARC, and are tested to meet several GS1 Tagged-Item Performance Protocol (TIPP) gradings, proving Belt’s particular suitability for retail and supply-chain applications.
No.1 choice for customer experience or loyalty
“We are very proud to be chosen as the inlay supplier for the Biscuit project. For SMARTRAC, it’s a welcome confirmation that our inlays and tags are the number one choice for demanding retail applications – especially those related to customer experience or loyalty”, says Guersel Zorlu, VP Sales EMEA at SMARTRAC.
Whether these applications target human or animal customers doesn’t really matter too much. The Biscuit project is a creative example of how RFID solutions can act as the door-opener for multichannel customer experiences and take customer loyalty programs to the next level.
Musti Group is the leading pet specialty retailer in the Nordics. The company operates 115 stores in Finland, 115 in Sweden and 4 in Norway and its product assortment comprises a wide range of pet supplies and accessories, as well as pet foods.
”It has been a sweet journey developing the world’s first customer loyalty program using UHF RFID technology together with TBWA and Musti Group. Combining RFID technology and other analytical data-gathering sources, we were able to accomplish something that has not been done before in retail. And the additional sweet part with this innovative customer loyalty program concept is that it was done focusing – instead of on humans – on man’s best friend, the dog.” says Joachim Weckman, Area Sales Manager at Nordic ID.
RFID has proven its worth in inventory management, authentication, and customer experience solutions. Enabling these solutions together used to require both, NFC (HF) and RAIN RFID (UHF) products. Smartrac’s new dual-frequency RFID inlays and tags combine both technologies in one innovative, high-performance solution.
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