SES Imagotag is the number one vendor in the world for E Ink digital signage and smart electronic price labels. You have likely seen them before if you live in Asia, Europe or North America. Digital price tags are huge business and it allows supermarkets and electronic stores to dynamically change the logo of a product and the price from a central server. It sure beats sending the stock boy to manually change 100 tags in a few hours, when it can be done within just a few minutes from one of the IT techs or the manager. This stuff is getting quite popular, there are over 200 retailers and 17,000 stores that employ this technology.
Today Good e-Reader has conducted an unboxing and review of five different E Ink electronic shelf labels and although this sounds like a lot, SES has 14 different variants in their portfolio. Some of these labels are standard black and white mono display and showcase E Ink Aurora technology. These tags can withstand -25C operation for use in Chillers and Freezers. The other ESL have 3-color Spectra FPL, which allows Retailers to use Red and Yellow colors. Battery life on each unit is around five years before they have to be charged, this is because it is only showing a static image and the only time it refreshes is when the price changes.
The one great thing about E Ink ESL is that it really pops. The vast majority of these products have a black bezel, which certainly makes the Spectra colors standout. They can be viewed from almost any angle and work great with all sorts of different lighting.
If you were a store and wanted to get shelf labels there are a few steps. First you need to contact a company like SES or Pervasive Displays to buy the labels. You then need installers to come and set up the infrastructure to support the price tags. Staff then need to be trained on how to use the server
and do things like set the imagery and choose the prices.
Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) Market was over $450 million in 2017 growing at a CAGR of 13% from 2018 – 2024. The global shipments are expected to surpass 240 million units by 2024. 79% of the retailers in North America are investing in IoT technologies such as sensors on shelves and automated inventory verification. The 72% of these retailers are planning to reinvent the supply chain performance by improving visibility using ESL, accelerating the ESL market growth.
We have found that each of these labels are small and lightweight and this is the first time we have seen these in a studio environment. I can see these really taking off in the next few years.
SES ESL
0.00Pros
- Spectra has many different color options
- Price is set from a central server
- Aurora can be used in freezers
- E Ink tech really pops
- Five year battery, since no refreshes
Cons
- Can get expensive to outfit a big supermarket chain
- Need to deal with many people to implement the technology
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
