Most retailers still stocktake by comparing purchasing and sales. But this does not take into account items that never arrived, which are stolen, which have the wrong price label on them or which don’t have any price label at all. As a result, the inventory accuracy averages only 60 to 80 percent.

For example, a customer asks if there is a size M available of a certain article. A member of staff looks in the computer and sees that there should still be two in stock. But when they go to look, it turns out there are none there. This leads to frustration for both customers and staff.

"the computer says it is really there.."
This is unlikely to happen with the new Store !D. You hold the scanner above a pile of clothes, and within two seconds it has scanned everything. This allows you to stocktake the entire shop in a few minutes, and it can be automatically corrected in the inventory system. Making stock inaccuracy a thing of the past.

Even though it's high tech, the scanner has an attractive design, and is so simple that it is fun to work with. There is only one button on it, so as a retailer you do not need to invest in training your staff. The scanner is currently in the test phase. Extensive testing is being carried out in a number of shops, to see how the device operates in practice. If everything goes well, it will be launched in the market in a couple of months.

The developer of the scanner is Danny Haak. He started in Retail in 2009, before which he studied electrical engineering at the University of Twente. At Nedap Retail , he is responsible for the Store !D product line.

Meet the developers at http://blog.storeid.net/