CONAD Partners with ZKONG to Set a New Benchmark for Smart Retail in Italy

ZKONG is proud to collaborate with leading Italian retail group CONAD (Consorzio Nazionale Dettaglianti) to deliver a comprehensive smart retail solution to its flagship location — the Le Befane Rimini store — accelerating the digital transformation of large-format supermarkets in Italy.

Located in the heart of Rimini’s commercial district, the store spans 16,500 square meters, making it one of the largest hypermarkets in Italy. The deployment covers over 50,000 SKUs across ambient, fresh, cold chain, and non-food zones. As ZKONG’s first large-scale project in Italy, the implementation marks a significant step forward in the company’s expansion across the European retail landscape.

Founded in 1962, CONAD is Italy’s largest and most influential retail cooperative, with a vast national footprint and strong ties to local communities. As a market leader, CONAD is deeply committed to leveraging innovation to optimize both store operations and customer experience. This collaboration with ZKONG reflects a shared vision for smarter, more efficient, and future-ready retail.

Through this project, the store has been equipped with ZKONG’s full range of Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL) and Sparkle Series LCD smart displays, providing clear and flexible communication across all in-store categories. Custom ESL models have been applied to challenging areas such as refrigerated cabinets and fresh produce displays, ensuring stable performance and high visual clarity even in demanding environments.

Backed by ZKONG’s cloud-native SaaS platform, the system enables centralized product and pricing management, real-time data synchronization, and multilingual display capabilities. It streamlines daily store operations while elevating the store’s digital identity and customer engagement through dynamic, visually unified in-store displays.

This project was also selected for inclusion in the prestigious “Europe’s Finest” annual edition curated by ESM – European Supermarket Magazine. Widely regarded as a benchmark for retail innovation across Europe, the publication features only a handful of the most outstanding and forward-thinking store concepts each year. The CONAD Le Befane Rimini project’s inclusion not only reflects the success of the solution itself, but also highlights the joint capabilities of ZKONG and its local partners in driving digital transformation across the retail sector.

We would also like to extend our sincere thanks to our Italian partner Areavisiontech for their dedicated support and professional execution throughout this project.

From Rimini to retail networks across Europe, ZKONG remains committed to empowering large-format retailers with scalable, efficient, and future-ready smart display solutions—paving the way for the next generation of digital retail.