Sharp brings e-ink displays to the supermarket

While e-books might still be a bit out of the price range for most consumers, that quick trip to the store for a jar of mayonnaise might give the lowly proletariat its first glimpse at the wonders of e-ink, thanks to some new price tags from Sharp. The tags will include price info, along with extra data like place of origin and a sell-by date. Supermarkets will be able to update tags wirelessly from a central computer, and thanks to the battery sipping technology of e-ink, the batteries should last up to five years on each tag, leaving stocking jockeys with quite a bit less to worry about. Sharp plans to start selling the tags on the 25th, and will charge 2,000 yen ($16.61 US) for a 2-inch version, while the 3-inch display goes for 2,300 yen ($19.11 US) -- both prices we're guessing are wholesale, and there's no word how much the back-end will cost. Sharp hopes to sell about 10 billion yen ($83 million US) of these things in 2007, but we've no idea when they'll start shipping 'em over to our beautimus supermarket meccas in the States.

[Via Plastic Bamboo]

[Alex Jacobs @ Jan 18th 2007 6:38PM]

Im sure England has had these in some ASDA stores for ages... In the big Hypermarket Stores.

[codywatson @ Jan 18th 2007 6:54PM]

What an awesome idea for this product! Fairly low cost considering that it eliminates labour for putting up price tags. That is, the person inputting the data into the system (pre-existing job) would also be updating the price tags, presumably.

[Alex Hubery @ Jan 18th 2007 6:46PM]

Its true...dunno bout asda..but english CO-OPs definatly have had these for a few years now just without such a big display.

[Pal @ Jan 18th 2007 9:54PM]

Japan has had these in LCD form for several years now as well, very nice.

[ScOObyDoo @ Jan 18th 2007 6:48PM]

I'm with Alex, I've seen these all over the world, as early as 1999 in German Metro cash and carry stores.

They received their prices from IR transmitters in the ceiling. What is new I'm guessing is the use of e-ink as the tags I saw were LCD.

[Karl-Koenig Koenigsson @ Jan 25th 2007 4:44AM]

I helped build that system and the first rollout for Metro in was in a store in Aachen back in 1997.

The labels and the infrastructure for Metro was the first installation of the second generation of a system by Pricer, (http://www.pricer.com/). Sharp is off by more than ten years here.

[Ryan @ Jan 18th 2007 7:30PM]

This has already been done in San Antonio, Texas for years by HEB. Whats so new about this>?

[Allsub @ Jan 18th 2007 7:42PM]

What happens when they decide to change the price of an item on the shelf after you already put it in your cart and before you get to the checkout?

[Andrew Fong @ Jan 18th 2007 8:08PM]

I'm pretty sure they'd do it after hours.

Would be interesting if you could find someway of changing the price-tag though. A little RFID magic and then you could go up to the counter and say, "What do you mean its $200? I thought the tag said $2!"

[F @ Jan 19th 2007 9:07AM]

How price changes are handled depends on how ethical the retailer is. My family's company has been using LCD-based electronic shelf tags for a few years. This is how we handle price changes:
If there is a DECLINE in the retail price provided by the shelf tag, the price charged at the cash register is changed simultaneously. This allows all the customers in the store to benefit from the lower price.

If there is an INCREASE in the retail price provided by the shelf tag, the price charged at the cash register is changed after a set amount of time. This allows all the customers that were in the store at the time of the original, lower price to receive that original price at the time of checkout at the register. In other words, they are NOT charged a price at checkout that is higher than the one they would have seen on the shelf tag.

[todd @ Jan 18th 2007 7:48PM]

is that lady waiting for the cameraman to go away so she can grub on some delicious dar•vida crackers?

[K @ Jan 18th 2007 7:52PM]

The Albertsons in Fullerton, CA gave these digital displays a test run a couple years back. They don't still use them.

[ducks @ Jan 18th 2007 7:54PM]

I saw these in a tiny grocery store in paris this summer. they are everywhere. except america... sure maybe some stores have them but its not widespread liek it has been in EU for years. once again USA is way behind the ball. so LAME

[Tim @ Jan 18th 2007 8:21PM]

This will be a boon for retailers who will be able to monitor unadvertised products that are selling like hot cakes and adjust pricing on the fly to maximize profits. Some clever programming, and this could all be done without any human intervention at all.

[Simon @ Jan 18th 2007 8:43PM]

The things in the picture look like LCD displays - see how chunky they are! I dont think this is eInk...

Either way, this spells the end of stores honouring mis-priced products. While you storm off to find the price tag, they can update it from their till!

[Castle @ Jan 18th 2007 8:49PM]

>>Im sure England has had these in some ASDA stores for ages

They have LCD based tags, not E-ink. LCD can be hard to read compared to E-ink which looks a lot better under flourecent-lighting conditions.

[Russ @ Jan 18th 2007 8:59PM]

i remember seeing an LCD tech to do this a while back - the neat thing was it could be updated by a imperceivable flicker introduced to the flourecent lighting ...

[WedgeTalon @ Jan 18th 2007 11:28PM]

Oh, so it's kind of like this:
http://www.elabelsys.com/

this:
http://tagnetics.com/products.html

and this:
http://www.ncr.com/en/products/hardware/esl.htm

right? Just look around for "electronic shelf label" and you can find these things.

[techcracker @ Jan 19th 2007 2:39PM]

ePaper isn't well suited for the grocery pricing application. One of the biggest problems is that it doesn't work very well in coolers or freezer. Also, the prices quoted in the article are way outside of what retailers would consider to have a reasonable return on investment.

LCD Electronic Shelf labels were first installed in Connecticut in the early 1990s. Tagnetics currently has Electronic Shelf Labels installed in California, Louisiana, New York and Texas.

[CM @ Jan 19th 2007 12:32AM]

E-ink doesn't really look all that much difference than LCD.

[Dispraiser @ Jan 19th 2007 1:37AM]

E-Ink is better than LCD because it doesn't require a constant stream of power, I thought. WIth E-ink, the image is kinda pulsed in when it changes. So, the benefit on those e-ink books is that you press the button, it electrically changes things from black to white, then power usage drops real low or almost completely off.

Don't attack if that's wrong, though...

[Dempsey @ Jan 19th 2007 4:41AM]

Dispraiser, yeah that is correct as far as I understand it.

The coolness of e-ink is that it isn't a light source or use backlighting. It is only readable in well, reading light. The killer app would be e-books. I guess this is just to keep it in the news until the price drop.

[Justin @ Jan 19th 2007 6:49AM]

Either an LCD or E-Ink system like this would be great. Here's the thing, though:

You have to make it absolutely foolproof. If even one of your tags doesn't update correctly, you will piss off a lot of people.

To those saying that it could just be changed from the cash register:

When I worked at Circuit City, all the tags were downloaded from corporate, printed out, and then placed on the floor. The reason we would have incorrect tags was 99% of the time that an employee didn't pull the expired tag. We didn't have any control over price tags except to pull expired ones and print new ones from the computer.

Lastly, this system would work best if you could use it in tandem with what we called "hand-scanners." This is that gray thing with buttons all over the front and the UPC scanner attached to the top. All you do is to scan the UPC of the product you want, scan the E-Ink price tag, and BAM! you've got an updated price tag. This way when products are moved in an updated layout, you can update the tags along with them. This should only be done with no customers in the store, by the way.

[Frexy Q. @ Jan 19th 2007 7:16AM]

We've had LCD displays like these in big grocery stores in Belgium for about 2 years now I think. It's a nice concept, easy and fast adjustable.

But it isn't E-ink though :)

[Anders G @ Jan 19th 2007 7:56AM]

My local foodstore (Stockholm, Sweden) has had those for a couple of years. Maybe not e-ink though, but some kind of LCD displays.

[Kenofthedead @ Jan 19th 2007 7:21PM]

I hope more stores use it, it's a wonderful idea.

[RJ @ Jan 21st 2007 5:46PM]

Yeah, before the Morrisons takeover of Safeway in the UK, they had the lcd versions of these over 5 years ago.