Beyond the Barcode: 40 Years in Retail Tech (and what’s next)

Forty years inside retail technology, told by someone who lived through the UPC, the fax machine era, and every RFID start-and-stop since.

Most conversations about retail tech focus on what is coming next. This one starts forty years earlier and traces how we got here. J.W. Franz, Director of Innovation at TRG, sits down with Mike Graen, Principal at Collaboration, LLC, for a walk through the technology shifts that actually moved the needle: price-stickering cans of beans, faxing $23 million purchase orders, the first UPC scan, and today’s always-on RFID infrastructure, computer vision, and shelf-scanning robots.

Mike spent 25 years at Procter & Gamble, including the early Bentonville days when Sam Walton himself asked for a permanent P&G team on the ground. He went on to lead Walmart’s RFID and on-shelf availability work, then founded Collaboration, LLC. The conversation traces how each technology wave got adopted, what stalled it, and the three shifts he sees defining the next decade: RFID moving into fresh food at retailers like Kroger, fixed infrastructure replacing handheld-only deployments, and computer vision and robotics taking over the data capture work that store associates have been stuck doing for years.

In this conversation, you’ll learn:

• What Sam Walton actually wanted to see in a P&G sales report, and why the answer reshaped supplier-retailer collaboration
• How RFID is moving into fresh food categories like bread, deli, and produce, and what that changes for date-checking, markdowns, and recalls
• Why retailers investing in fixed RFID infrastructure are after use cases handhelds cannot deliver
• How serialized data could let suppliers finally answer the question of where in the store their product actually sells
• What the next decade of retail technology means for the role of the store associate
• Rather than treating the next wave of retail technology as a series of point solutions, this conversation reframes it as a long arc of removing friction between manufacturer, retailer, and shopper, with each generation of sensors picking up where the last one left off.

About Collaboration, LLC: Mike Graen is a 40-year retail industry veteran with 25 years at Procter & Gamble, leadership of Walmart’s RFID and on-shelf availability initiatives, and a current advisory practice working with retailers including Kroger, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Nordstrom on on-shelf availability, inventory accuracy, and serialized data strategy.

About TRG: J.W. Franz leads innovation at TRG, working with retailers and brands on RFID, automation, and emerging technology adoption across the store and supply chain.

Learn more about TRG: https://www.trgsolutions.com

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