Pacific Cycle wins top supplier gong from Wal-Mart; RFID excellence helped

Pacific Cycle received the award for "outstanding inventory replenishment management performance" for the year ended January 2004.

“We have a great relationship with Wal-Mart, and are glad to be recognized as an outstanding partner,” said Chris Hornung, founder and CEO of Pacific Cycle.

“Pacific Cycle prides itself on being a full-service supplier to its retailers, and this award is an example of the outstanding work our supply chain group does.”

As a co-managed supplier to Wal-Mart, Pacific Cycle provides the mammoth retailer with inventory replenishment management services, as opposed to Wal-Mart employing somebody to perform those duties.

Like other suppliers to Wal-Mart, Pacific Cycle uses RFID tags – radio frequency identification – to track inventory. Wal-Mart is famous for its adoption of the very latest in inventory tracking technology.

The retailer requires all its suppliers place Electronic Product Code (EPC) RFID tags on cases and pallets shipped to Wal-Mart distribution depots.

Pacific Cycle, however, went further than the mandate and nows deploys an all-singing all-dancing RFID system to track inventory and shipments.

Every bike box shipped from Asia to Pacific Cycle bears a smart label with an embedded RFID tag.

Pacific plans to use 7 million tags per year when the system is completely installed.