Photos: IBM's store of the future

Price labels, click and collect and RFID

By Julian Goldsmith, 8 October 2008 10:59

The IBM business development centre in Hursley contains a number of showcases for projects in development across tried and tested Big Blue architectures. One of these is an Electronic Shelf Edge Label (Esel) support network.

Esels do away with the time-consuming process of replacing paper price labels whenever there's a price change - an all-too frequent occurrence.

While Esels may cut down on retailers' admin, there's yet to be any wholesale take-up, with the price per unit cost holding back adoption.

The set-up at Hursley uses a form of smart paper for the label, making it cheaper and lighter than conventional LCD units. The Esel shown here uses an RF chip to update its display, which regularly polls the system for any updates and then powers down, reducing energy use.

Photo credit: Julian Goldsmith/silicon.com

Comments

There are 3 comments. Join the discussion

  1. 1. anonymous

    Can we have an option to show all the photos on one page,

    takes way too long to click through 17 photos!

  2. 2. Richard Davies

    With prices being able to change dynamically, my fear would be that I pick something off the shelf at price 'y' and when I get to the till without realising it the price has been updated and now I am paying price 'x'. Customers could lose confidence feeling that they were losing out.

    This would also be confusing to say the least. There was no comment about how this would be controlled. One easy solution would be to only update the prices over night or something.

  3. 3. Radical Meldrew

    A great idea. BUT....this is the UK? This may sound a silly comment at first but no doubt these labels will regularly be pulled off the shelves, trodden on and generally mistreated and abused. So thanks to the 'great' British shopper, who treats anything that is not theirs with absolute distain, there will be little or no advantage.

Post your comment

In order to post a comment you need to be registered and logged in.

Log in or create your silicon.com account below

Will not be displayed with your comment

By signing up for this service, you indicate that you agree to our Terms and Conditions and have read and understood our Privacy Policy.

Questions about membership? Find the answers in the Membership FAQ