The Real Cost of Inventory Blind Spots in Retail 

The True Cost of Poor Visibility  

When you dig a little, you quickly find out how many common retail problems— from failed BOPIS orders to simple mismatches between supply and demand—can be traced back to some sort of inventory blind spot. 

Retail insiders say the true costs of these problems are hard to fully quantify; but the larger loss is obvious to anyone paying attention. 

“Retailers often come to us frustrated because they just don’t have the visibility, they need to run omnichannel effectively,” said Adam Jatich, who works with enterprise retail accounts at TRG. “It shows up in everything from lost sales to wasted labor.” 

JW Franz, TRG’s Director of Innovation, agreed. “We know these blind spots drive issues across the board,” he explained. “If your inventory data is wrong, nothing else really works. You can’t promise a true ‘endless aisle.’ You can’t reliably fulfill BOPIS orders. Every downstream process is impacted in some way.” 

And it’s not just retailers pushing the pace of innovation. 

“Customers are also pushing for new approaches,” said TRG Account Executive Ami Stephens. “They may not follow the daily progress of electronic shelf labels and RFID solutions, but everybody wants these gaps closed” 

“Once again, good inventory data is the bedrock for customer personalization,” added Franz. “Without it, everything stalls. You can’t personalize offers or get the most out of new AI tools when your basic counts are still wrong.” 

New World. New Tools. 

Barcodes and manual counts defined inventory management for decades. But those methods have trouble keeping pace with modern retail expectations. 

“Barcodes obviously work, but they can only tell you so much,” said Franz. “They just won’t give you that total item-level accuracy. So, you’re trying to manage omnichannel with 70 percent accurate data, which means you’re already starting from behind.” 

According to Jatich, this realization is often what brings TRG to the table with retailers. “Many RFPs we see are really about one thing,” he said. “How do I get better data on what I have and where it is? These retailers know their current systems just can’t deliver.” 

Modern technologies like RFID offer many advantages over traditional barcodes, even in traditional workflows. But the real paradigm shift comes from serialized RFID, which gives every item its own digital identity. 

“Older tools simply can’t provide this level of visibility,” said Franz. “It can take time to get there with a modern setup, but once you do it can really change everything.” 

“In some cases, we’re talking about going from 70 percent accuracy to 95 percent,” he added. “So, the impact is immediate. We’re talking measurable sales lifts, fewer markdowns, smoother fulfillment, etc.” 

Stephens said she has seen attitudes shift toward this technology as this sort of ROI becomes clearer.  

“RFID isn’t experimental anymore,” she said. “Retailers increasingly see it as necessary. It’s becoming part of the baseline conversation.” 

Visibility Matters 

The message from experts is clear: inventory accuracy is no longer a back-office metric. It is a cornerstone of the modern customer experience. 

In today’s competitive environment, blind spots are simply too costly to ignore. That’s why inventory visibility is expected to be a central theme at NRF 2026, the biggest retail show of the year. 

Retail leaders will be there looking for credible strategies that bridge legacy systems with modern solutions and provide a single, reliable view of what is in stock.  

And you know we’ll be there too!