POCO in Germany

March 28, 2017

Digital price tags at POCO

POCO uses ESLs: digital price tags benefit customers and employees. Over the past few years, digital price tag or electronic shelf label (ESL) technology has improved considerably, especially in the area of visual display. Recently furniture discounter Poco has started to use ESL systems at its store in Goch, Germany – much to the delight of its staff members.

“Lately, my employees are especially happy to see me when I visit our market in Goch,” says Sebastian Schrader, Head of Organization at Poco. The reason for this: since September 2016, the ESL system installation has –among other things- made price changes of the roughly 7,000 products much easier.

POCO has been using Delfi Technologies’ solution since 2016 in order to take advantage of the different possibilities with the technology.

"You can’t put a price tag on preventing long wait times at the checkout."

Sebastian Schrader, Head of Organization at POCO

At the beginning of last year, Poco had decided to use digital price tags in a pilot project to simplify the numerous price changes – more than 10 million processes – it conducts each year. “Compared to manual paper labeling, this system has made our pricing and tagging processes much quicker and it allows us to change prices several times a day. It also adds a high degree of reliability, ensuring that the right prices are on the product at the right time since the process is fully automated,” explains Schrader.

From his point of view, it’s not only the employees but also the customers who benefit from this streamlined process: the prices are always updated and the associates are able to devote more time to customer service. He adds, “It was important to us to communicate that the project is not intended to reduce labor costs.”

ESL is red hot – advantages thanks to ePaper technology

The latest development in the ESL sector makes it possible to display more than just the price. Next to black and white, red as well as simple graphics are now also available to accommodate visual display. This is made possible by ePaper technology. It eliminates some of the drawbacks of previous LCD displays. Here, visual contents look the same from every angle due to the short distance between the imaging elements and the surface. There is no flicker thanks to the static display.

Cross-selling campaigns can be highlighted with symbols like diamonds or stars for example. A red border around the price tag can alert sales floor associates about product availability at the warehouse or indicate increased sales. Kai-Uwe Jensen explains how this works. “An inventory management system should make it possible for retailers to display logos or to distinguish organic products by including product characteristics. An image that has been stored in templates can then be assigned to specific characteristics. The ESL provider’s system must also ensure access to this data.“

Read the full article at iXtenso – Magazine for Retailers.