From RFID To Real-Time Retail With Radar CEO Spencer Hewett

When Spencer Hewett told me that one retailer saw a 60% reduction in shrink after deploying Radar’s technology, I immediately had two reactions.

First: That’s an eye-popping number.

Second: Maybe I really do owe Spencer that beer.

If you’ve followed Omni Talk for a while, you may remember that Spencer and I made a friendly wager on-air about whether Radar could execute on the aggressive rollout plans it was announcing at the time. Fast forward to today, and not only has the company dramatically expanded its footprint, but it has also become one of the most closely watched players in retail technology.

And after spending a few minutes catching up with Spencer recently, it’s easy to see why.

The conversation wasn’t really about RFID.

It was about what happens when retailers finally know what’s happening inside their stores.

Inventory Accuracy Is Becoming Table Stakes

For years, retailers have invested enormous resources trying to answer a deceptively simple question:

“Do we actually know where our inventory is?”

The challenge has always been that stores are dynamic environments. Products move. Customers pick items up and put them down. Associates relocate merchandise. Online orders pull inventory from the sales floor. Theft happens. Receiving mistakes happen.

The result is that many retailers have historically operated with inventory records that were directionally correct but rarely perfectly accurate.

What Spencer and his team are working toward is something fundamentally different: real-time visibility.

Not weekly visibility.

Not daily visibility.

Real-time visibility.

According to Spencer, Radar’s platform now guarantees a detect rate above 99% while providing precise location data on tagged merchandise throughout the store. That’s a level of accuracy that fundamentally changes how a retailer operates.

Because once you know where products are, you can start fixing a lot of other problems too.

The Hidden Cost Of Not Knowing

One of the most interesting parts of our discussion wasn’t inventory itself. It was everything inventory accuracy impacts downstream.

Take fulfillment.

Spencer shared an example of a retailer improving online order fulfillment rates from roughly 70% to 98% after deploying Radar’s technology.

Think about what that means operationally.

Store associates spend less time searching.

Customers receive fewer cancellation notices.

Pickup and delivery orders become more reliable.

Labor becomes more productive.

And perhaps most importantly, customers begin trusting that when a retailer says an item is available, it actually is.

That’s not an inventory story.

That’s a customer experience story.

Shrink Might Be The Biggest Prize

The statistic that grabbed my attention most was the reported 60% reduction in shrink that one retailer experienced.

Now, to be clear, those were results shared directly by the retailer, not claims made by Radar itself.

But if those numbers prove replicable at scale, the implications are enormous.

Shrink has become one of retail’s biggest challenges. Retailers are investing billions of dollars annually trying to understand inventory loss, whether from theft, operational errors, fulfillment mistakes, or supply chain issues.

What fascinated me about Spencer’s explanation was that visibility itself may be part of the solution.

When inventory can be monitored continuously, discrepancies become easier to identify. Distribution centers receive better feedback. Store operations become more accountable. Problems that once remained hidden become visible.

And retail has always been remarkably good at solving problems once it can actually see them.

The Connected Store Is Getting Closer

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from my conversation with Spencer is that we’re beginning to move beyond inventory management and toward something much larger.

For years, the industry has talked about the “connected store” as if it were some distant future concept.

But Spencer described a world where inventory, staffing, fulfillment, merchandising, and customer behavior are all connected through a common data layer operating in near real time.

That’s a significant shift.

When retailers understand not only what’s in the store but also what customers are touching, trying on, abandoning, purchasing, and searching for, entirely new operating models become possible.

Staffing decisions become smarter.

Merchandising becomes more dynamic.

Store operations become more predictive.

The store starts functioning less like a physical location and more like a highly instrumented digital platform.

The Next Frontier

Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Spencer where he thinks this technology goes next.

His answer surprised me.

Consumer electronics.

While RFID adoption has largely been associated with apparel and footwear, Spencer believes categories like consumer electronics represent the next major opportunity.

And the logic makes sense.

High-value products.

Complex inventories.

Strong omnichannel demand.

Significant shrink challenges.

It’s exactly the kind of environment where real-time inventory visibility can create outsized returns.