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Comment by OberstKrueger | Hacker News Reader

Where is it clear that there is great market demand? The only time I see devices like this discussed is in the small maker community. And the technology limitation of not being a fast updating display limits it to more niche uses.

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Half of all supermarkets in Finland have e-ink screens for product price tags along shelves. It saves tons of printing. In a country full of trees. Must be great value.

I think the primary savings of e-ink pricetags is in labor, not materials. Being able to just send price changes directly to the shelf without having humans go through and change them out is a big deal, so to speak.

Automatic pricing updates on shelving displays have been around for awhile, eink versions have gotten more popular because they use so much less power. That combined with low power bluetooth has made it even easier to roll them out.

Also less error prone and more importantly much faster.

Being able to update prices in near real time would also potentially allow for more efficiency in setting prices, meaning you can set them in real time.

With real time stock information, you could handle sudden demand spikes much more gracefully. Have you prices automatically adjusted between an minimum and maximum price based on current stock and demand. Basically get you targeted stock turnover for the best possible price. (Best coupled with a self-checkout system so the customer consents to the current price).

Not that any supermarket I know of is currently smart enough to do that but they could. With all the hoarding due to shortages I could see them smartening up one day.

> Not that any supermarket I know of is currently smart enough to do that but they could

This may or may not be illegal as fuck. Picking up an item that costs 1$ and having it cost 1.2$ by the time you get to the checkout is all sorts of wrong.

I think there are some self-checkout solutions where you scan the barcode while taking the product off the shelf instead of at the end. The price should, of course, not change between picking up and payment.

Basically, like online shopping works.

Totally illegal here. If you have a more expensive price at check-out, than marked where the product is located, it's free up to $10.

https://www.opc.gouv.qc.ca/en/consumer/good-service/goods/fo...

The Price Accuracy Policy allows customers to be compensated in case of a pricing error at the register. If the price of the article you are buying is higher at the register than what was shown on the shelf, the merchant must:

    give you the item for free if the item costs less than $10;
    sell you the item at the shelf price, minus $10, if the item costs more than $10.

So pricing could change at store close, but it'd be risky to change otherwise. And of course, it should* be a problem. You pick up a product, get to cash, and the price sneakily changes and you don't notice? Uncool.

Paper price have to be changed every week for specials even in Quebec.. it is very labour intensive and very error probe. They also often fall off. Eink price displays are meant to help that.

I used to work in a groceries store and changing price used to take so long that we had to do even while opened with shopping customers..

One comment here, there don't need to be sales!

Sales are a marketing gimmick, to pull in shoppers via loss leaders. So all that work you described, is on purpose.

That said, the store needs to take inventory, audit things regardless, monitor when to order new product. Price changes are merely a part of that.

I wonder if some clients change the price themselves to get the item for free.

This is a posted price, marked by the store. They'd need to forge it, the logo, font, etc. That said, there are usually security cameras, and that would be fraud.

People shoplift too, so it is a similar type of crime.

There's a whole slew of ways to scam retail prices. Sometimes customers used to just peel a price tag off one product and place it on another. (Store employees used to, less than 40 years ago, put a price sticker manually on every box. Then they'd key the price into the register.) Sometimes if there's a SKU sticker rather than the preprinted UPC sticker on the package from the manufacturer people will still try this.

You're assuming sub-day changes. Stock doesn't necessarily come in every day and responding to demand spikes on a day by day basis solves this for any non-24h shop.

You could also do sub-day lowering of prices, although I think day by day changes adds a lot on its own if you want to have dynamic prices in response to demand.

To be fair, this has always happened with a sticker price. I always check the receipt, and now and then there are some differences.

It makes it more difficult to argue it is the wrong price though! :)

I live in Kazakhstan which is country without trees. I never saw eink price tags. They're paper. I doubt it has anything with trees. Paper is too cheap.

Sure they are eInk? On Carrefour here they have had plain old LCD ones for ages now. It looks like e-ink, but on close inspection it is definitely not (e.g. mirrorish background color). Polarized glasses also help detection :)

And that is what I do agree e-Ink is overrated. People have trouble distinguishing it from reflective LCDs (remember the Pebble).

Can confirm that Japanese supermarket is also full of small 2x1 inch eInk screens for prices (multicolor even).

Here at Kohl's the price signage is e-ink.

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