Project Background

Sam's Club is a high-end membership store under the Fortune 500 company Walmart. To date, it has over 800 stores worldwide, making it one of the largest membership-based stores globally. As an outstanding representative of membership-based warehouse supermarkets, Sam's Club has opened 47 stores nationwide as of January this year. In 2023, its revenue reached an impressive $84.3 billion.

On May 25, 2024, the new Sam's Club in Nanjing Jiangbei officially opened and partnered with ZKONG, deploying over 4,000 ZKONG electronic shelf labels, setting a benchmark for digital retail stores.

Challenges Faced

In building a digital retail store, several frequently mentioned challenges are to be faced:

1. High Labor Costs and Frequent Selection Errors

2. Large Store Area and Long Communication Distance

The store spans over 10,000 square meters, making unified management of electronic shelf labels difficult. High ceiling heights also posed challenges for stable communication between base stations and labels.

3. High Deployment Numbers and Server Pressure

With over 4,000 ESLs deployed, server pressure was significant. The variety of products required easy and flexible installation of labels in different scenarios.

4. Green Production Requirements

Solution

To address these challenges, Sam's Club implemented ZKONG's ESL solution, achieving automated updates for all product prices and information across the store. The solution included Blade series e-ink retail shelf tags, Valley series convenience store shelf labels, and Essence series four-color display data ESL, with a total deployment exceeding 4,000 labels.

Project Benefits

By adopting ZKONG's ESL electronic shelf label system, Sam's Club achieved significant results:

1.Real-time Price/Information Updates: Enhanced operational efficiency and reduced labor costs. The system allows for real-time price updates, minimizing the time and labor needed for manual label changes, enabling quick adjustments to prices and information to respond to market competition and demand changes. Customers can access the latest prices and promotions, improving their shopping experience.

2.Unified Management of Large-Scale Warehouse-Style Stores: A single ZKONG base station can manage up to 5,000 labels and cover an area of up to 700m². Array deployment of ZKONG wireless base stations enabled unified management of all store ESLs, with built-in antenna technology ensuring stable long-distance communication.

3.Unlimited Server Expansion and Custom Accessories Service: To meet the needs of the store's large deployment and diverse scenarios, ZKONG's ESL system employs cloud services and management, allowing unlimited server expansion.

This facilitates easy management and updates of labels. ZKONG also provided a full range of ESL accessories and developed customized accessories for Sam's Club, ensuring convenient and aesthetic installation in various product display scenarios.

What's Beyond

Martin Granstrom, Vice President of Product Design & Research at Sam's Club, once stated, "Today, Sam's Club is a leader in digital retail transformation. We are called the 'innovation engine' for our Walmart enterprise."

Building on this strong foundation of digital innovation, ZKONG will continue to collaborate with Sam's Club to explore more innovative intelligent ESL solution, helping Sam's Club achieve refined operations and comprehensive digital upgrades.