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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Walmart can't change their prices as fast; humans have to re-label things. For now.

Brick and mortar retailers can use radio-controlled e-ink shelf price tags for minute by minute price changes.[1] This hasn't really caught on yet, but the technology is ready.

[1] http://www.eink.com/esl_tags.html

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My mother used to be a scan coordinator at a grocery store. We have been talking about this eventually happening for over a decade. Although based on her experience, the infrastructure for even letting her know what pricing should be requires a major IT overhaul as well.

The cost and wiring to power eink displays is too much, due to the USD being fairly stable, prices don't change daily/hourly, which would help eink signage for shelving make sense.

You essentially either need a power drop to each section of shelving, or you have to replace batteries on every sign through your store every X months or years.

Kohl's stores in the US already do this, although they're not grocers.

Grocery stores have order of magnitude more SKUs than Kohls, and operate on smaller margins.

There are lot of wireless E-ink displays for sale that advertise 5-year battery life with a simple button cell. For like $10/label.

We have a grocery store in Krefeld, Germany, which uses e-ink price tags exclusively[1]. But I never noticed a real-time change when I was shopping there.

[1] http://www.lebensmittelzeitung.net/storechecks/Neues-Real-Ko... (e.g. pics 9, 20-24).

Actually eInk price displays, known as Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL's) [0] are extensive deployed in many retailers.

You can see the labels available from Pricer, one of the big players in the space: http://www.pricer.com/en/Solutions/

France retailer Carrefour uses ESLs in all their stores, for every SKU. They use ESL's from Pricer who says Carrefour uses 12 million labels, deployed in 2004, and they are updated via in ceiling infrared transmitters. [1]

ESL's are also common in Germany. And in the USA some Whole Foods use them.

This random blog claims "The ESL market is estimated to grow from 186.5 million dollars to 399.6 million dollars by 2020" [2]

Ses-imagotag showcases some interesting applications of their tags including manufacturing [3] and office use.

Finally a list of companies in the space [4]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_shelf_label

[1] http://www.pricer.com/en/PressRoom/Case-Studies/Electronic-S...

[2] http://www.retailintelligencelab.com/blog/2016/11/24/the-ris...

[3] http://www.ses-imagotag.com/en/benefits/

[4] https://iot-daily.com/2015/03/19/best-electronic-shelf-label...

This is pretty awesome. The system is smarter than I thought when I saw it in-store.

Since the tags are networked with infrared, they can flash on command. For example when store employees are trying to find a particular product for stocking, or retrieving it for a delivery order (example safeway.com delivery).

http://www.pricer.com/en/Solutions/Store-Manage-Solutions/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrtO8qVmezM

> Brick and mortar retailers can use radio-controlled e-ink shelf price tags for minute by minute price changes.

How does that even work? You pick up the product and the price changes by the time you go pay for it? Who would like that?

They also send you an additional bill if the pride increase before you get home.

Then they compare after-market prices and if you're trending higher than forecasted: additional bills.

That's what you'd think. But with Best Price Just For You!™ technology, you don't actually get the price on the shelf. You get the lowest listed price in the last hour. If the price is raised you Keep Your Locked In Price™. If the price is lowered you get the new better price!

You mock, but I'm sure hundreds of hours have been spending crafting that corporate grocer speak!

IIRC one of the US grocers (stop and shop or Kroger?) actually tried that as an ad for their store card: "you do not even know how much you will pay for many products, but it will be a lower price". Needless to say this didn't run for a long time.

I suspect it's really day by day, not minute by minute. They probably only update overnight.

How would they even have data to justify minute by minute?

In case you're not being facetious: the price would change overnight not during business hours.

Maybe not. Dropping the prices on the wrapped sandwiches after lunch hour would be useful to clear out the unsold inventory.

This could also be applied to baked goods, and with time, even expiring produce. It would be something to benefit both the consumer and the store!

Grocers do discount short-dated products. Look for the sticker that says "manager's special".

In my grocery store they give you 50% discount after 8pm. No need to change price labels.

How do people know?

> In case you're not being facetious: the price would change overnight not during business hours.

I'm not. Parent said "minute by minute", that's why I asked. Overnight is what I was assuming too, until I read that comment. Couldn't tell if it was a joke or serious.

Carrefour in France was using it already some 10 years ago. More current photo: https://theworklife.com/graham-miln/files/2013/12/2013-09-ei...

I saw e-ink shelf tags deployed throughout the store at a Whole Foods Market in Sugar Land, Texas.

I've also seen similar (LCD based shelf tags) at Whole Foods in Plano, TX, for the better part of the last decade.

Minute-by-minute seems unnecessarily precise. I doubt the efficiency gains would outweigh the infrastructure cost and maintenance of a real-time system. The psychological influence of .99 pricing is probably more effective.

Walmart doesn't need to.

They squeeze the manufacturers or wholesalers for the best wholesale price.

In Ohio at least, Kohl's has had e-ink shelf tags for the past few years.

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