Since 2016, new retail has become the benchmark for traditional retailers transitioning and internet companies entering the retail industry. The rise of most new retail brands has started with the humble ESL tags. A complete electronic shelf label system includes: electronic shelf labels (e-ink displays, low-power Bluetooth modules), AP base stations, an online electronic shelf label management platform, and PDA handheld terminals.
New retail is closely connected with the concept of "people, goods, and place," and these are often mentioned together. The main goal of new retail is to effectively connect "people, goods, and place." Today, electronic shelf label systems, centered around ESL tags, can essentially remove barriers between these three elements, enabling easy management.
The basic function of ESL tags is to display product pricing information. While traditional paper price tags meet this basic need, every time there is a promotional activity or price adjustment, updating the price tags becomes a tedious and time-consuming task. Additionally, manual updates are prone to errors, inefficient, and often fail to be timely. These are precisely the issues ESL tags were originally designed to solve.
Today, ESL tags not only address the challenge of manual price updates but have also been developed for broader applications. Current ESL tags offer a variety of functions, including price changes, promotions, inventory checking, picking reminders, out-of-stock alerts, and connecting to online stores.
During the rapid growth of e-commerce, the retail industry often heard the mantra "online replaces offline." However, with the rise of the new retail concept, this has evolved into "online and offline integration." In this context, ESL tags have become the bridge between online and offline channels.
Online Store — ESL Tags — Offline Store
Customers place orders through an online store app or mini-program, and the ESL tags in offline stores flash LED lights and emit alerts to remind staff to pick items in real-time.
Offline Store — ESL Tags — Online Store
In-store customers can scan the QR code on the ESL tags to access the online store and shop through online channels. Customers can become members, and the system can analyze their preferences from multiple dimensions, creating user profiles to achieve precise sales, successfully guiding offline traffic to online platforms.
The most direct relationship between price tags and products is that price tags serve as a display for products. However, fresh, frozen, and prepared food items often need to be displayed under specific temperature conditions. This requires digital price labels to function properly in high or low temperatures. Leading ESL tag manufacturers have introduced products suited for various temperature environments, covering ranges from -40°C to 40°C.