Handheld vs. Overhead RFID Debate: The Final Countdown For More Exact Inventory Counts

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I'm Anne Mazinga.

I'm your host for today's session and this Spotlight series.

Omni Talk fans, it's going to be a little different than most.

We have put a couple of our store tour videos out recently showing the value of RFID in specialty apparel stores like H and M and Fabletics.

And we have been flooded with questions asking, which is better?

Can I do handheld readers?

Can I do overhead readers?

Do I do both?

What do I do?

Help me out.

So today we thought we'd take the opportunity to get this settled once and for all in a knockdown drag out debate with our two experts for first, Madeline Lauria, the director of go to market strategy at Gray Orange, who will be representing Team Handheld Scanner, and Patti Agupta, the director of product innovation and corporate development for Gray Orange, who will be representing Team Overhead readers.

Welcome to you both.

Patia, you and I met in London a few months ago and this was before all of the hubbub started around the Fabletics video.

I'm excited to have you back on or on for the first time here.

Welcome to the show.

How are you doing today?

I'm great and I'm really excited for this.

Yes.

Are you feeling like, did you practice your like, did you do push ups or anything to get ready for this for representing Team Overhead Reader?

Yeah, I looked myself in the middle and I said I got to shine.

Did you have like some, some music where you like I got to play my like pump up, pump it up track?

Absolutely.

I'm anyway into dancing.

I had a lot fun doing some dancing around to get some rhythm on.

Oh my gosh, this is going to be so perfect.

Meline, welcome to you.

This is your first time on Omni Talk as well.

Are you, what was your, what was your like game day prep for team handheld scanner.

Yeah, and it's pretty simple.

Start my morning like I do every morning with a coffee and just some handheld dumbbells.

I love it.

For those listening, she's got a handheld prop and she is doing legitimate dumbbell lifts right now.

It' just curls curls all day with that handheld scanner.

Well, you two are clearly both ready for this.

Before we dive into the debate, I'd love for our listeners to get a little bit more information about each of your backgrounds.

Patia, I'm going to start with you and if you don't mind giving our listeners a quick overview on what Gray Orange does for those who might be meeting Gray Orange for the first time.

Absolutely.

Thank you Ann for having me here.

Gray Orange has been in the industry for 12 plus years.

We've dominated the warehousing world where we've almost touched every node in the retail and supply chain world.

A few years ago we pivoted into the retail store space where we realized that there was a huge parallel between what Gray Orange does in the warehouses and what is needed for retail stores.

And the retail stores eventually have the exact same thing.

They have inventory, they have associates, they have.

The only thing that is really different is store associates.

Right, right.

And that's exactly what G Store majorly focuses on.

And that's a little bit about grayorange in G Store.

And what's your role there?

Tell us a little bit about what you oversee.

I'm Director Product Innovation and cop dev at grioorange.

I'm one of the co creators of G Store and I've spent the last eight years in the retail industry.

I absolutely love retail chaos and my job is to make it behave.

I'm spiritually hovering over like an overhead reader in the little aisles of the stores.

So yes, let's say that I love things automated.

I love the casual flex.

Like I'm a co creator of G Store of the G Store platform which is a pretty major thing.

Perea.

So I'm excited to have you on and I'm very excited why you chose Team Overhead.

So Madeline, let's go to you next.

Tell us a little bit about your background and what you oversee at Gray Orange.

Glad to be here with Pareo.

They are fighting superhero and seeing what they've been working on in the overhead space.

But my background is in the handheld solutions and really understanding that that layer of data that goes between your stores and your devices and how to make the most of it and build ROI a little bit easier.

My role is in go to market strategy, because this is a complex story.

So telling that story to you guys here today and within the greater organization has been a real honor.

But I am team handhelds.

I'm here for the scrappy guy.

And let's see who wins.

Now, one question I want to add in here for those who are not familiar.

Do you mind giving us a quick overview, each of you, of kind of what the overhead reader does?

Let's go to you first, just so that, like, set the stage for an overhead reader is and what kind of store it could go in, just so that they understand the context of what we'll be talking about today.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Thanks, Ann.

I think it's a great question.

Overheads have been more recent in the market with respect to deployments.

They've existed for a very, very long time.

These are small antenna devices that go get embedded in the ceiling of your store, right?

It's literally like an immobile robot, but on your ceiling.

Right.

What it's doing is it's always on.

It's always reading exactly what inventory you have on your shop floor, what you have in the back store.

And it just doesn't only give you back and front.

It also gives you down to a zone level, down to an exact location level.

So you precisely get like a Google map for your store inventory, right?

You exactly know where your products are.

So you get count accuracy, which you also get with handheld.

Right along with that, you get location precision, and that becomes a game changer.

And then all the other processes in the store get enabled and empowered by this data source.

That's sort of what the overhead world looks like.

Madeline, tell us a little bit about how handheld readers are being used in stores today.

So for all of the retailers that might have just heard that amazing pitch which sign me up, but there's complexity there.

There's.

There's necessary integrations.

There's pieces of data that we need to be able to get the most value out of these overhead readers.

So when you think about a handheld, you really only need to start with, what do you think is in your store?

What does it look like?

Give me, you know, the product attributes.

And with just that minimum information, we can do a count each week.

We can see that accuracy skyrockets to 98% even within just the first count.

So when you're thinking about building ROI or convincing your CFO if this is a worthwhile investment, if we should even talk about overhead readers, this is a really easy way to prove it to them.

Well, Madeline, let's Let's go to you first.

Let's hear some opening statements from make the case for Team Handheld.

It's pretty easy, Anne.

I mean when you're thinking about RFID and you want to get started, what's the easiest thing you can do?

Pick up your own device, put on your own labels and just start counting and see what you see.

Sure, sure.

So if it were up to me, that usually starts with a handhelds because they are a lighter lift.

But I'll tell more about that when we get to some of the the more hard hitting questions.

Okay, okay.

She's going to save it for later.

She, she's all like ready to go.

She's going to save, she's got some nuggets she's going to drop later.

Pray.

Let's, let's hear your opening statement for the overhead readers.

Yeah but before that.

Manual effort for 2026 is absolutely a bold choice.

Madeleine.

The bows are already getting thrown.

I love it.

I love it.

So okay, now let me just lift the conversation literally.

Overhead RFID means continuous tracking, no efforts, no miss scans, no oops, I forgot the stockroom moment.

With overheads, the moment a product moves, the system knows about it.

It's like giving your store a central nervous system.

Overhead gives you real time location, shrink visibility, automated replenishment signals and you just don't have to lift a finger for it.

Right?

Right.

It's visibility without dependency.

Ah, but how many people have to lift that finger before no one has to lift that finger.

Priya, what's your response to that?

See, handheld scanners only tell you when the product was last scanned.

Right.

That's the only information.

The only thing that you get to know is when was the item last scanned and last seen.

Right.

And the analytics with it is absolutely very bare minimum.

Overhead gives you analytics like never before.

You get movement patterns, you get dwell time, you even get to know about misplaced items and insights that handhelds can never give you alone.

I think that the best way for us to be able to get deep into these topics is to start the debate and I'm going to be asking you a series of questions.

Some of these are questions that we got from our audience when they saw some of the videos at H M store in SoHo in New York or the Fabletics store in La Jolla, California.

So I'm going to throw these out to you and then I'm going to let the two of you debate these.

So let's start with question number one.

I'm a specialty apparel retailer.

I Want to test rfid, but I have minimal budget and staff.

What should I do?

Perea, we're going to give you this first chance to answer.

Let's hear what you have to say.

My honest recommendation is why do you have to decide at the start?

Why don't you give both a shot?

Right.

Pick one store, do an overhead install, pick another store, do a handheld try.

Right.

And then just compare the results of the two as you, you'll get the results so quickly that it's going to be super simple for you to take a final decision.

Right.

We saw this exact journey with Fabletics.

They started off super convinced that they wanted to do all handheld stores, but started realizing that, let's just give this a try.

And then they finally decided when they saw the sales uplift, they finally decided they're going to do 10% overhead stores.

And as they started rolling out, they started realizing the value of it and boom, within a year they had all overhead stores deployed.

100% stores on overhead readers.

Right.

Because all the stores self funded themselves with the sales uptick that they saw as the, as the months progressed.

Right.

That's the, that's the beauty of a system like that.

Interesting.

I didn't know that you could do that.

So that makes sense.

So you're saying, Perea, that you should, you, you can.

Even as a specialty retailer with, you know, a hundred or so stores or fewer, you could do a side by side test to see what's going on.

One handheld, one overhead.

And that would be your recommendation?

Absolutely.

And that's the power of the right technology.

When your inventory is accurate and it's actionable, the ROI funds itself through the top line growth that you will see.

Excellent, Madeline.

I mean this one almost at first I thought that we were making the case for handheld because Fabletics decided to go all handheld, but what's your response?

How do you, it's, it's your floor now to, to debate what Podia just said.

Do you feel convinced yet, Ann?

I mean, hey, I'm just, I'm just the moderator of this debate.

I am not.

I do not choose sides until the end.

We'll let the audience be the judge.

Good answer, good answer.

I think that I'm going to take this back even before that conversation happens where we're discussing what kind of hardware to implement.

And the first conversation is always, is RFID investment going to be the thing that solves this challenge that I have?

And I think getting to the root of what that challenge is is the first step.

And we like Pariah said we can't talk hardware until we really understand what are the goals of the store.

If you don't know what they are, then you should be aware of all of the benefits that RFID can bring to you.

What we usually and traditionally start with is, I think I have something.

I'm not sure.

My customers aren't sure.

I don't know if I can sell it.

But then all of a sudden it pops up at the end of the season.

And so inventory accuracy is the root of so many of the beginning foundational challenges that RFID can solve.

So if just testing for that is your goal, we have a really lightweight, easy way to do it with handhelds.

But if you're trying to see the full breadth of what is available with rfid, well, then it's a two way street.

Now we need to talk about what kind of data you can share with us, and then we can talk about all of the different hardware and sensor equipment that can share data on top of that to add even more value.

Got it?

Yeah.

Because this is.

This gets back to what I remember the Fabletics team telling me is like, you know, product doesn't sell from the back room.

So if it's, you know, deep within a box in the back.

And that's when she was using their store manager was using the handheld scanner to kind of go through and go through all the boxes to get that accuracy level, that, that makes sense to me now is that, you know, otherwise that stuff just gets found, you know, three months after the season is over and it's not salable at that point in time.

All right, I want to move on to next.

The next question number two is my store's inventory count takes multiple staff members and several hours.

What solution is best for that?

Madeline, I'm going to you first on this one.

I remember working those late nights in retail overnight with cold pizza.

One cold pizza sitting out for all of our.

All of our staff and the gig workers that were coming in to help us do the inventory behind us.

Please tell me, how do I shorten that time to do my inventory?

Which solution would be best coming from retail?

I remember those nights.

And Ann, you remember you take a bite of pizza.

Did I count two mediums and you're starting over?

Yes.

Oh, awful nightmares.

The stuff of nightmares.

Yeah.

So human error causes a lot of these discrepancies we talk about with accuracy.

And an annual PI is traditionally the solve that we use to get our inventory back to what reality is within the store.

Now, any of the Retailers that I've ever spoken to that are watching this might be laughing because labor is a hot topic for me.

I feel that RFID allows you to reallocate your labor.

And so now you're spending time on more of the things that matter as opposed to fixing and trying to circumnavigate a process to find a product that is really antiquated.

So I would say that with a handheld solution, for example, auditors are fine with us using that for physical inventories and are getting approved.

So you can replace that with rfid.

It will be more accurate.

Will it involve less manual time of counting products over the entire project?

That's where I'm not sure that handhelds will really take the bait.

Okay.

And that makes sense because that is consistent kind of with what we saw at the Fabletics store when we were there.

They had a combination of overhead and the handheld scanners.

So that when I saw that inventory count being done in 18 minutes, I was blown away.

I could not believe how quickly that was done with one person.

So I think that's.

That's a great set or great context.

I think, Madeline, for us to understand that it's not just the RFID readers alone, probably.

Okay, next question.

We're going to.

I'm a retailer with a large variety of SKU types.

Not everything is RFID tagged.

Now, I have a hunch, but I'm going to go to you for the answer on this one because something tells me that maybe OVERHEAD is going to take the lead here.

Sorry, Madeline.

Yeah, I think that's exactly why the platform matters a lot more than your tagging strategy.

Right.

Okay.

Explain that a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, if you think about a strong platform or a strong system, it shouldn't matter how the data is coming in.

You have overhead readers, you're getting a continuous stream of data, you have handled readers, you're getting just in time data feed, you have no rfid, you have barcodes, you're getting again a just in time, but more like a harder scanner method.

Let's say you don't even have barcodes.

You're living in age old technology days.

You're just doing manual count.

At the end of the day, the system needs an inventory data feed.

That feed could be coming in any form.

What will be different and different inventory systems is the frequency of the data feed that you will be getting.

In an OVERHEAD system, you will be getting a continuous data feed in a high end or a barcode system or a manual system, you will be getting just in Time or as you scan data feed.

At the end of the day, what matters is the data frequency.

Right.

In reality, most of the retailers have a hybrid setup, right.

They'll have most of their inventory, let's say RFID tagged, some of it might not be tagged.

And that's the reality because not every item is ready for RFID tagging yet.

You have jewelry, you have liquids and whatnot, which cannot be RFID tagged at this point in time.

And hence the platform has to be able to consume all of this.

So the data feed absolutely doesn't matter.

The platform has to normalize it, reconcile it, and still give you a trusted count and location across the store.

Right.

And that's how pragmatically rollout rfid.

Got it.

Okay.

So if I'm hearing your argument correctly, it's really about the overhead readers being able to give visibility to everything's place in the store, having that on an ongoing basis, and then being able to kind of fill in the gaps for some of those items that can't be RFID tagged just yet, which is pretty common.

I mean, I think that's, that's one of the biggest challenges that when I've taken people, you know, through the H and M store in soho that are, you know, big box retailers, specialty retailers, is that, you know, only some of the items are currently RFID tagged.

And they're still, they want that solution.

It's still effective.

It's just how do I get visibility as much as possible into the variety of options or a variety of products that are moving around in my stores?

I wanted to add too, because I think that one of the benefits that you have with a handheld solution is you can isolate products.

So in a store format that has a large variety and maybe not fully RFID tagged, well, then let's just capitalize on the gold that's sitting within your store.

Let's make sure that we can isolate and count those RFID items and reduce human error and counting for those products.

So I think again, if you're hoping to count that whole store, this hybrid model is something that you need to find a partner that can support.

But if you're also just looking to prove that business case, you know, that's my favorite roi, then let's just focus on that, that part of the product in stores that are tact and see if we can make a business case there.

Interesting.

So it's not just about what there's still a value, even if just a fraction of the products can be RFID tagged and counted, which Makes sense.

I mean, especially when you get down to like the lab aspect of it too.

It's like, okay, you, if, if you can consolidate even sections of the store, it still cuts down on the time.

Yeah.

A lot of retailers think it's all or nothing, but I think that maybe that's not the future.

Yeah.

In fact, Walmart also just started with like tagging fashion, apparel, clothes.

Right.

And.

And slowly transitioned into all the other sections of the store.

And they are still tagging a lot part of their inventory.

Right.

And that's exactly how retailers should be thinking.

They have to start somewhere.

And the most important thing is the fast moving aspect of yours.

Whatever drives the most business for you or your high, you know, ticket items, I think that's what deserves tagging earlier than the rest of them.

I agree with you on that one, Para.

All right, let's go on to the next question.

In stores with high shrinkage, how can RFID help my team identify and prevent stock loss while ensuring products are available for customers?

Madeline, we're going to you first on this one.

I have an interesting answer for this one because I think it doesn't actually matter if you need a handheld or an overhead or what type of sensor for this use case brings us back to the intelligence layer and making sure that if we know what's in your store, whether you use barcode or RFID or Bluetooth even, and we know what's selling well, then it's a simple math problem to figure out, okay, well, what's not here and what hasn't sold and what other layers of data that exist within the store can I use to try to identify the root cause?

The root cause is going to see lasting shrink reduction across the.

Okay, and Priya, do you see different versions of this with the overhead scanners or like.

Because that's something that I've heard from a lot of the retailers that we've talked to who have deployed the overhead scanners as well, is that, you know, shrink is a huge.

The data that they have about the products, knowing where they are is highly valuable.

Tell us your perspective there from the overhead from team Overhead reader.

Absolutely.

I think one thing that I'll add to Madeline's answer is if you think about overhead, if a product without a transaction or without being accounted for is leaving the store, a handheld until you do a scan, you'll not be able to identify it in an overhead environment.

You will definitely be able to identify it.

You will not only know what items left the store, you will also know where were they last seen and what time were they last seen in the store?

Now that data is powerful because you get a heat map of loss loss immediately.

You literally get a heat map of exactly where your items are leaving the store.

In some of the retailers, again, I'm not going to name them, but in some of the retailers they've literally seen some specific inventory leaving from the backstory at a very particular time in the day and they actually linked it back to where the root cause was.

Now that's an interesting case study that overhead also unlocks.

You don't necessarily need loss prevention readers at your exits all the time.

If you just need analytics of loss prevention, overhead partially already solves for it.

Got it.

That's really, really interesting.

I hadn't thought about like all the cases.

I mean, I think we think about entry and exit, but yeah, the back room, that, that is an area that becomes a black hole for a lot of retailers.

Absolutely.

All right, let's go on to the next question.

We'll keep it moving along here.

Next question from the retailers.

I get new arrivals every few days.

Can RFID help me quickly know what's on the floor versus what's in the back room?

I think I know the answer to this one.

Perea, let's go to you first.

This is exactly where the biggest differentiation between overhead and handheld sort of comes out, right?

Because handheld of course will let you know the difference between what's in the front and what's in the back.

So does overhead.

The difference is you get down to the zone level, you get down to the point or location level or XY coordinate or whatever you want to call it.

Right?

So you exactly know down to the location level, exactly where every item is without scanning and without waiting.

And that's exactly the most powerful part.

One additional thing that this also unlocks is you also get to know how fast your new arrived inventory is making it to the shop floor.

Are you taking six hours to make it available for sale or are you taking a couple of hours and making it available for sale?

Because every unexposed item is loss of sale in a way, especially for your new arrivals.

You can also figure out how your exposure and the time of exposure, how it is converting into a top line impact.

Because if a store is taking a day to expose the new arrived inventory, whereas another store, which is absolutely doing it in near real time, using the right technology and the right triggers and the right alerts from the system, you can absolutely measure the translation into sale with the exposure rate.

Right.

That's Sort of where the power comes with handheld.

Of course, it's a, it's a different game.

Madeline, maybe why don't you add that.

Yeah, yeah, it is a different game.

You're right, Praya.

And I think that the game there is focusing on what are those key metrics that you care about?

Do we need to know how long it was sitting there for?

Do we need to know exactly what corner of the store it went and moved?

So, so I, I, I question it myself.

And what's the, the minimum data that we need to be able to prove a business case that this helps with receiving, for example?

And is there additional analytics that we get without having to ask a store associate to make sure that they got all of the boxes?

I think I'm debating against myself now, and I didn't mean to do that.

Oh, no, Madeline, that's not how this works.

Theme.

Overhead.

No, but I think if I were to be a devil's advocate for myself again, I think there is a huge benefit of bringing the two together.

And we'll talk about it as we progress in the conversation.

Right.

There is no this way or that.

It's actually both coming together because that's where the ROI sort of starts to play in.

We'll talk about it.

That's one thing that's becoming kind of a resounding theme right now is that you really have to look at what your MVP case is, what are you trying to solve for, and then apply the right technology to each of those, those cases.

And that might be.

That might be overhead.

That might be handheld.

That might be a little bit of both.

Madeline, weigh in on that before we go to the next question.

Yeah, I'd be very curious to learn who that question came from, because if it's someone who's trying to convince their supply chain friends that this could be a worthwhile joint investment, then sure, maybe we can start with that handheld use case.

But if supply chain teams and IT teams, ops teams are all working together on such a project and they all want to benefit from this data, well, then we're at.

We have a different starting point, and that's really exciting.

All right, well, let's go.

We have two more questions.

This one I hear quite often, so I'm very curious to get your perspective on this, especially you, Madeleine.

This one is my associates already have a lot of apps and devices.

I want to minimize the number of devices that they have to interact with on a daily basis.

So what should I do?

Handheld or overhead?

Madeline, I get this question a lot as well.

And so I think that the interesting part and starting point for this conversation is if you have many apps and many devices, you're capturing a lot of great valuable information.

How can we then make it more valuable?

And I definitely think RFID tracking, every movement and data point within your store operations has the ability to be that one single app.

I think that that is a journey and that is a phased approach.

So if we can just start with knowing what is in your store, what is leaving and selling, that's where we start.

Let's replace all of those apps.

That's Omni Channel, maybe even a little bit.

But when we start to talk about the financial systems.

Absolutely can replace those as well.

But we need to make sure that we have a plan that the entire organization's on board with and we can help with that.

And that starts with inventory tracking, I'm guessing, right?

Pariah?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

That's exactly where it starts.

Now, Pariah, you mentioned something earlier about overhead readers and the real time nature of this, which I think is another thing that we saw at the H and M store in soho.

Trends are changing quickly and by store.

This retailer said I need quick visibility into the product that I can send to a neighboring store or product that I can put on display fast to catch a TikTok trend.

Sometimes I'm really glad that I'm not working in the stores and this would be one where trying to track TikTok trends and make sure that I have product on the floor to match those in a matter of hours would be so stressful.

Parea, I'm going to give this this first debate question to you.

Tell us how you would approach this question from our retailer friend.

I think this is exactly where the fun part of intelligence begins, right?

You sort of get signals of performance of inventory not only at a store level but at a store network level.

Right.

So something buzzing is happening in New York, right.

And if you are able to understand that that is let's say Tyler's concert, that's happening in New York and everybody is going crazy over, let's say Sequence Top and all the stores want to put in Sequence Top as the top shelf item.

You should be able to build that inside and give that recommendation to the stores just in real time, not just at a particular store level because that is getting some demand for sequence tops but across the network of stores in that region so that they can all benefit of it.

And they are not reacting but they are responding to the the need of the hour.

Right.

One another interesting data that is very, very useful.

And a lot of retailers are demanding for is store network, movement of inventory, intelligent movement of inventory.

Right.

So let's say Tyler's concert.

Let's continue that story.

You had that concert.

You need sequence stop in the New York area and, you know, stores in the nearby, let's say Philadelphia and other regions also have, you know, those sequence stops, and you're running out of them in the New York stores.

Now, the system should be intelligently able to understand that those sequence stops are fast movers in the New York City region and are slow movers in the Philadelphia region.

And that recommendation to move or do a store to store transfer within the next four hours to move the, you know, slow movers from one region to the fast mover of the other region and make them available for sale, Boom.

You're not just impacting the top line for one store.

You're impacting the top line for your store network.

And that's where the central teams become the most excited about a system like, you know, the right platform of choice.

Basically.

Yeah.

You guys are bringing back so many memories of sitting on hold, calling every neighboring store when I worked at J.

Crew in New York and calling, like, the Connecticut store, calling the New Jersey stores, calling all these stores, trying to just get through to somebody during the holiday season to see if they could hold an item that was in very high demand, like the sequin tops that you're talking about.

Priya.

All right, Madeline, come in with a rebuttal.

I actually have a story.

I was in New York this past week just shopping around some of our retailer friends, flagship stores, and they have a lot of interactive technology in these stores, one of which was a mirror to give me some suggestions about what would look good on me or what's a new latest trend.

And that usually works for retailers to get that first lift and provide that almost marketing aspect.

But I was very disappointed when I went to find that shirt and it didn't exist in the store in my mind.

Why?

Why do we suggest it if we know we don't have it?

But then I realized that that link is broken.

And I think that that's going to be the big shift we see in 26.

Oh, my gosh.

I sure hope that's the case.

That's a very powerful example that Madeline pointed out.

We realized that this two years back when we started off the G store journey, like three, four years back.

The first thing we were also honestly trying to understand what is more important in the market, what is less important stuff like that we were working with overhead readers, we were working with smart fitting room technologies, and we were sort of taking our bets.

We were doing some stores with overhead in some stores because the retailer really wanted that.

I just want to do the smart fitting room technology here.

I don't want to do anything else.

They chose to do the smart fitting room technology even before they put the overheads, even though we sort of did make them try to understand that it's sort of the platform has to come together because otherwise you'll be showing stuff on the smart mirror which doesn't exist in the store or you accurately can't find it, or the person in the fitting room is waiting three to four minutes for you to go find it, and you're just standing there waiting that the associate is going to go grab it for me.

Right.

And it's frustrating.

The retailer realized it super, super soon, and then they ended up putting overheads in those test stores.

So I absolutely resonate.

We realized this two years back and we've made that a conscious choice.

Even though retailers ask for it, we never give it.

We say, you know, you have to start with the right choice first.

Right.

Even if it is handled.

I'm going to give each of you the opportunity to make your closing statements.

Madeline, I'm going to go to you first for this.

Make your final case for the handheld reader, if you would.

Listen, I think that the handheld reader is tried and true.

It's been there for you throughout all of the years.

It has changed very small amounts in those years.

And you know, why?

Why change a good thing?

We can prove ROI together.

We can start out in rfid.

Let's dip our toes in the handheld is your friend.

Okay, Going with the tried and true old standby, old reliable handheld reader.

Parea, make your final remarks about the overhead readers, if you would, instead of.

Making a remark on from an overhead perspective, I will say smart store is the choice.

Right.

It's not this way or that.

I really feel hybrid is the choice.

If you think about real retailers, right.

Who are sort of trying to get the buck for their, you know, return for their buck for them.

If I have high velocity stores, I'd rather put overhead.

If I have slightly slower velocity stores, I'd maybe put handheld.

If I have extremely big stores, Right.

Fashion umbrellas, as we call them.

Right.

If I have stores of that kind, I would maybe put a hybrid within the store environment itself.

I would put high velocity areas with overhead and maybe slower velocity areas with handheld.

I don't think there is this way or that.

The technology has to evolve.

It has to combine.

Of course overhead will give you and I can vouch for it, it will give you a better uptake in your top line.

There is no debate about that.

But if you want a cost effective ready to go immediate, you know, place to start, just go with handheld.

This has been the most civilized debate I have ever been a part of, so I will thank both of you.

I feel like you just really gave our listeners so much to consider and think about.

And thank you for taking our listener questions on these very two important options when it comes to inventory tracking in your stores.

Great job to both of you.

I'm certain that we will have people that may want to probe further ask you more questions after listening to this.

What's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

And will you be out at NRF Parea?

If you don't mind giving us that information, that'd be great.

If you're going to be at an RF, Madeline and I both will be at booth 3974.

We're going to be super excited to see you there.

If you want to understand what's happening now with the retailers, if you are tagged, you are not tagged.

You are in your handheld journey.

You're still anticipating.

Do I even need rfid?

All of it.

A combination of Madeline and myself with both handheld and overhead expertise is going to be an absolutely treasure hunt conversation.

So feel free to join us at the booth.

Excellent.

And definitely go check out the Fabletics store in New York and the H&M Soho store.

Both have G store deployed in them.

I've seen them both and I cannot recommend enough.

That's one of one of the top stores on my store tour hit list for New York right now.

So make sure to see both of those while you're out there.

That wraps us up for this very first Spotlight series debate.

Thanks again to both Madeline and Parea for joining us today and sharing all of their knowledge and information.

And on behalf of all of us here at Omnitok, be careful out there.

Thanks, Ann.

Back to handheld dumbbells.