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It seems the rumours of e-ink based displays’ imminent death at the hands of tablets were greatly exaggerated. Despite a glut of portable colour screen devices now on the market, e-book readers are more popular than ever, and a company called ZBD Solutions now wants to use the e-ink technology as easily updateable store signage.
The company has developed a special low-power, black and white LCD display that holds an image even when no power’s applied. So like with typical e-ink technology, it doesn’t require a constant source of current to show text and images.
The tiny signs are also all wirelessly networked together, so when an item goes on sale, someone simply needs to update a central database instead of wandering the store with a sticker gun. And because the technology is LCD-based with a fast refresh, there’s nothing stopping them from introducing eye-catching animations too. Wait, maybe that’s not a good thing. [ZBD Solutions via PSFK]
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they use these in the liquor stores in australia. As the night goes on an less and less shops are open the price goes up
“…instead of wandering the store with a sticker gun”
Actually, he said in the video that the display was updated using two-way RFID.
So instead of wandering around with a sticker gun, now you have to wander round with a slightly different RFID sticker gun.
How long before theses are hacked; you could cause chaos and confusion by changing or wiping out a whole stores price labels.
You can do that already with paper, a printer and some really basic photoshop skills. It’s not like these will make it easier, particularly since they’ll have some kind of basic encryption on.
How do these differ from eInk displays?
They don’t need any power source at all, but will still display the information.
They are e-ink displays.
It says they don’t need ‘constant’ power but it would need power to update the display – that is in part one of the major selling points of e-ink displays, you get super long battery life as it only uses power to update a display and no more power beyond that screen update – even when the battery is flat your e-ink display will still display an image.
I used to work as a Team Leader in a well known supermarket chain (one that helps you live well for less, try something new, and makes life taste better…somehow), and using our internal suggestions portal I suggested this idea best part of 18 months ago.
Despite my pointing out that this system, while admittedly costly to implement, would save over 8736 hours of labour – which equates to £63685.44 – annually in our small store as no-one would have to be employed to change and verify tickets, I was told it was a redundant idea, and that tickets are the best way forward and would be until at least 2020.
Funny that.
Mate, you live in England.
As an entrepreneur who sells to the high street in some capacity, unless it’s alcohol or fashion, British businesses and civil infrastructure (trains, buses etc) are stuck in the dark ages in comparison to say Germany, Japan, Spain or France.
When we pitch our wares to the high street, mainly restaurants and bars, only those owned by immigrants tend to adopt new technology that will not only inspire their staff and customers, but over the longterm, increase business because people like and can sense efficiency. However, it is in the (pure genetically) British psyche to fear anything new, so you’ll have trouble pitching to any business that is a) Public. b) Owned by conservative types.
All said, try Waitrose, they are not public (employee owned thankfully as part of the John Lewis Partnership) and quite imaginative. They introduced those customer barcode machines years ago, so you can tot up your shopping as you go.
Scotland, but whatever.
Should also be noted I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Oops, sorry! Removes large shoe from mouth. (No kidding, I love haggis and do enjoy the odd scotch and coke when I’m in the mood. Get my haggis from Waitrose, but it’s some scottish brand of course.) Shoe now half removed…
£63,000 saving – rubbish. Thats 4.5 people changing paper tickets *full time* in your local store!
In our local food store, where “Good food costs less”, they change the tickets once a week, and it probably takes a competent employee an hour, may be two to do the job.
So it costs £15 a week to use paper verses this e-solution costs;
Unless it can interact with you iphone, or offer more than just a price, I cant see the point.
That’s exactly right, four full time staff and one part time staff. There’s over 30,000 different lines, with prices being matched nightly and offers rotated every three weeks.
You can’t see the point because you are short sighted ( pun not intended ). When I worked at co-op & woolworths prices were updated daily on different departments, not to mention changing and updating larger display signage ( not just small price labels ); the potential savings of going to a paper-less & ink-less system are huge, especially if you look at global ( developed countries atleast ) scale. The number of trees saved ( I’m no hippy ) would be huge too, all in all meaning the stores either save money and pass it onto customers, or they generate a larger profit and pass that onto staff ( perhaps ) & improve their business as a whole. Not being able to see the benefit of this system ( I had the idea maybe 5-6 years ago whilst updating the million or so CD & DVD labels in our store ) is laughable.
The Co-op in Jericho, Oxford had these over two years ago, but for some reason, they have gone now. Mind you, the store is badly managed and in total chaos, with the automatic checkout machines almost always broken down or out of receipt paper.
Anyway, the ZBD solution is a brilliant idea and well executed too.
I remember those in the Jerry Co-Op! They were only there for a short period of time so probably just part of a trial.
And yes, that place was (and still is) badly managed. I always end up going to the Londis further up the road.
I used to work for one of the large IT vendors who have been demoing this technology for years to retailers to no real avail. It has always confused me how behind retail is here in the UK. Tesco are considered one of the pioneers in the industry yet still havent adopted this. It makes perfect sense. No power required unless the price is changing and less hours changing tickets.
The real exciting prospect though is automated price changes based upon set criteria e.g. over-ordered pasta and it is about to be chucked as the store will not sell enough, the system can dynamically promote pasta sauce to sell more pasta as well, saving the shrinkage cost.
They use those here in France quite a lot
In Fuertuventura I saw these in a supermarket and it looked like they had little solar cells to be charged by natural sunlight / store lights which I though was quite clever.
Actually saw the price of bananas go down whilst I was watching the display
I know they wouldn’t need power to run the LCD but if they were to be updated via wi-fi, surely the wi-fi card would need to be constantly powered for the connection? Or can it be remotely turned on, even though the wi-fi card isn’t active? I’m not network-savvy enough to say for sure.
Also, these would have to be insanely water and damage-proof! I’m just thinking of all the split drinks containers (milk cartons…) and potential drops these would be faced with (tins falling off the shelf, etc).
I can’t see Tesco or any of the bigger supermarkets bringing these in until they are colour, if that is ever possible. The issue being that Tesco especially use the bright yellow labels to draw your attention as part of their shopping psychological tricks and that is not something they would want to lose.
Also, the e-ink displays just look drab.