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What is Compliance Labelling?
Compliance labelling is the process of ensuring that a product’s label adheres to the rules and regulations set within a specific industry and country it is being sold in. Compliance labels play an important role in providing critical information to consumers to protect their safety such as allergens and ingredients, mitigating legal and financial risks for businesses and facilitating supply chain efficiency.
What Types of Compliance Labels are there?
Depending on the country and industry the product is being sold in, the rules and regulations set by the authorities and industry bodies vary. Here are some industry examples:
Food industry
With consumer safety as the top priority, this includes ingredient list and allergen warnings, nutritional information, expiration date, country of origin and more in order for consumers to make informed decisions for consumption.
Pharmaceutical industry
In this industry, the safety of the consumer/patient is critical and hence pharmaceutical products need to comply with ensuring information such as active ingredients, warnings, dosage and directions.
Retail industry
Retailer-driven compliance labelling or retail vendor compliance refer to the rules and regulations established by retailers for their vendors and suppliers, usually aimed at driving efficiencies. Walmart and DICK’s Sporting Goods are a few examples of retailers that have launched such mandates for their vendors. Let’s talk more about them below.
Vendor Compliance Labelling by Retailers including RFID Tagging for Walmart Mandate
While Walmart’s RFID implementation is well known as a recent vendor compliance labelling, other retailers have also set labelling requirement expectations for their vendors and suppliers to comply with in the pursuit for supply chain and operational efficiencies as well as greater customer satisfaction. Compliance labelling requirements vary between different retailers, and vendors could face penalties and fines for non-compliance, hence it is very important for vendors to fully understand each retailer’s compliance requirements.
In this article, we will cover 2 major retailer vendor compliance programs and share key points to look out for:
1. Walmart RFID Mandate
Retail giant Walmart started requiring suppliers to tag certain product categories with RFID in 2020. The requirement was then extended to cover more product categories and suppliers were required to comply with the new mandates by February 2024.
Suppliers are required to attach an RFID tag to each product item. RFID inlays have to adhere to GS1 and ARC standards and approval must be obtained from the Auburn University RFID lab
2. DICK’s Sporting Goods RFID Mandate
Like other large retailers, DICK’s Sporting Goods have also mandated their suppliers to implement item-level RFID tagging for most items sold at their stores by January 2024.
To comply with the mandates within a tight deadline, many suppliers looked into RFID tagging solutions or sourced for their retailer-approved ARC-certified RFID labels from service bureaus.
Flexibility and Cost Savings with In-house/plant On-demand RFID Printing
Are you a supplier in need to comply with such mandate but don’t know where to begin?
Are you sourcing finished RFID labels from a service bureau but wish to print and encode the labels in-house for greater flexibility and cost savings?
SATO Vendor Tagging (RFID) Solution
SATO and Loftware have worked together to provide our RFID tagging solutions for retail suppliers. With this solution, you will be able to print and encode your products’ information on ARC-certified RFID labels in-house in your factories or distribution centres. What’s more, this cloud-based solution is ideal for simultaneous printing and encoding across multiple sites without serial number duplication and keeps log of the printed and encoded data and status for traceability.