By Chris Stein, CEO, Flex Rental Solutions
We recently hosted a live webinar on RFID tracking for the live event and AV rental industry. More than 80 people joined us, and what struck me most was not the turnout — it was the quality of the questions.
These were not softballs. Attendees wanted to know about portal accuracy rates, cable scanning workflows, frequency interference with wireless audio systems, whether you can 3D print your own tag housings, and what it actually costs to get started. Real questions from people running real warehouses.
We answered more than 40 of them live and in the follow-up materials. This post captures the most important things we learned from that conversation — both what we shared and what the audience told us about where the industry actually stands on RFID adoption.
Where the Industry Stands Right Now
We ran several polls during the webinar and the results were telling.
When we asked where attendees were in their RFID journey, 79% were either not yet started or just beginning to explore. Only 16% had been live with RFID for a year or more. That gap between curiosity and implementation is exactly the problem we set out to solve with the Flex RFID Proof of Concept Kit.
The pain points were equally clear. Sixty-five percent cited confidence in inventory counts as their biggest challenge. Fifty-five percent said check-in and check-out takes too long. And 70% identified reducing lost or missing inventory as their top financial opportunity.
Those are not software problems. They are workflow problems that RFID is specifically designed to address.
The Questions That Came Up Most
A few themes dominated the Q&A session.
Cables are still the hardest problem.
Multiple attendees pushed back on whether RFID actually solves the cable tracking challenge when read rates drop inside dense cases. The honest answer is that RFID does not magically read through a tightly packed case of coiled XLR cables at 100% accuracy. What it does is dramatically speed up the moments in your workflow where cables are already being handled individually — during prep when cables are being packed, and during returns when they are being unloaded and tested. Reading cables at those moments, rather than forcing the technology to work against its own physics, is where the real time savings come from.
Portals are intriguing but not a solved problem.
Several attendees asked about walk-through portal setups. Our testing shows portals achieve 75 to 90 percent read rates in controlled warehouse environments, which falls short of the accuracy the live event industry requires. We are continuing to evaluate portal solutions including conveyor-based approaches, but handheld scanning remains our recommendation for most operations today.
Tag selection matters more than most people realize.
Not all RFID tags are created equal. The right tag depends on your surface material, your environment, and what you are tracking. Cable collar tags from HID Global are purpose-built for AV cables and outperform generic labels significantly. For metal surfaces you need on-metal tags. For soft goods like drapes and linens there are textile-specific options. We put together a full breakdown of tag types, vendors, and pricing in the Q&A recap.
The 100-tag scan limit is being addressed.
Several power users flagged the current 100-tag batch limit in the Flex5 Mobile App as a constraint, particularly for portal and high-volume workflows. This limit is actively being reviewed and updates are planned. We are also developing RFID functionality for the web-based desktop environment where different limits can be explored. No specific timeline to share yet, but it is a priority.
Watch the Recording
Every Question, Answered
We compiled and answered all 40+ questions from the session, organized into six topic areas so you can jump straight to what is relevant to your operation.
- Getting Started with RFID
- Hardware and Scanners
- Tags and Tagging
- Scanning Accuracy and Best Practices
- Software and Roadmap
- Portals and Advanced Workflows
Where Are You in Your RFID Journey?
One thing we want to get right is making sure any follow-up from Flex is actually useful to you based on where you are — not just a blanket sequence that treats everyone the same. If you have 10 seconds, let us know where you stand.
Ready to See RFID in Action?
If you want to talk through what an RFID rollout would look like for your specific operation, we are happy to walk you through it.
Flex Rental Solutions is the rental management platform built for the live event, AV, and staging industry. The Flex RFID module integrates directly with your existing inventory workflows — no separate system required.