PARTNER NEWS: STMicroelectronics has published a case study explaining the benefits that the implementation of NFC tags offer luxury brands and detailing how it worked with Paco Rabanne to enable the France-based fashion house to find the right NFC solution when developing its first connected scent.
ST25 NFC tags inside Phantom by Paco Rabanne or Lessons from the first NFC-enabled fragrance explains how ST set about meeting Paco Rabanne’s requirement that the robot-shaped bottle for its Phantom fragrance for men be transformed into “something unique” by using NFC to offer seamless user experiences.
It also reveals how the technology provider overcame the specific challenges of embedding an NFC tag and antenna with adequate range into the limited space of the fragrance bottle cap.
The case study goes on to explain how the use of ST’s ST25TV02K type 5 NFC tag — which supports the ISO 15693 standard — offered a long enough range, could be fitted into the fragrance bottle’s diffuser and provided “significant interoperability with NFC-enabled smartphones”.
“ST worked with Paco Rabanne to make the NFC implementation as smooth as possible,” the case study says. “The Phantom case study shows that the public and the manufacturing industries are ready for more NFC-enabled products.”
The relative simplicity of the implementation also allowed Paco Rabanne’s engineers to focus on “developing all the web services in-house instead of devoting all resources to the NFC technology itself,” ST adds.
In addition to allowing Paco Rabanne to offer customers added value in the form of music playlists and “an Instagram sticker in the shape of the robot for whimsical selfies”, the implementation of NFC tags has also enabled it to be “much more environmentally friendly” by informing customers that the bottle is refillable and sending them a video showing them how to refill it.
“Another exciting aspect of this case study is that Paco Rabanne plans to build on its infrastructure,” ST says.
“The company is looking into business-oriented features as well as additional services to customers.”
STMicroelectronics provides insight into NFC implementations for luxury brands was written by Tom Phillips and published by NFCW.