Thanks to Intel, Levi’s Is Now the Big Brother of the Retail World

By Eugene Kim

Intel ’s microprocessors were once synonymous with personal computers.

But these days, the chipmaker sees opportunity everywhere, even in dungarees.

During a keynote at Intel’s IoT Insights event on Tuesday, CEO Brian Krzanich said Intel has partnered with Levi’s to build a proof of concept technology — built on top of Intel’s IoT Platform — at the Levi’s Plaza retail store in San Francisco.

Levi’s put an RFID tag (a wireless device that can transfer data in real-time) on all of its items in the store, and connected it to Intel’s IoT platform, which basically aggregates and sends the data to the cloud.

Once the data is sent to the cloud, Intel’s analytics platform can track every movement in the store, from excessive inventory to sold out items that need restocking. Krzanich said every item is tracked for volume and location in real-time, making sure things are in place when the customer needs it and removed when it sees less demand.

“They now have the ability to power an application that lets them look at the whole store, holistically, every minute, and gives the employees the ability to scan of the entire store,” Krazanich said.

Krzanich didn’t disclose the actual sales benefit Levi’s saw by implementing this new technology, but said that “with every 3% of inventory accuracy gained, you get about 1% increase in sales uplift…all of that goes directly to the bottom line.”

Internet of things has been one of the hottest buzzwords in tech lately. It’s the term used to describe how devices get connected to the web, collecting and analyzing a bunch of data for the user.

Intel’s been making headways into the IoT space lately, largely in order to diversify its business that’s historically been reliant on the PC chips. Its IoT segment is still small relative to its overall revenue, only generating $581 million last quarter (or 4% of the total $14.4 billion in sales), but Intel has been using it a lot to showcase its technical capability.

Thsi isn’t the first time we’ve heard Levi’s working with a Silicon Valley tech firm. In May, Google showed off a pair of “smart jeans” created in partnership with Levi’s that connects with the smartphone and lets the user control volume or play music by tapping on part of the fabric.

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