On March 22, the 15th Private Label Fair Aisa and the 4th Fresh Materials Retail (PLF&FMR) opened at the Nanjing International Expo Center. PLF is one of the three major professional exhibitions for private label products, alongside the PLMA’s World of Private Label Show (Chicago, USA) and PLMA’s World of Private Label Show(Amsterdam, Netherlands). The 15th PLF&FMR includes five halls, namely the Livelihood Food Ingredients Hall, the Comprehensive Food Hall, the Personal Care Commodities Hall, the Livelihood Food Hall, and the Leisure Food Hall. Nearly 1,000 exhibitors showcase over 100,000 products, covering all categories of retail consumer goods, attracting nearly 19,000 professional buyers and 2,000 decision-making executives to visit the exhibition.

The concurrent forums and activities discuss the current development status and future trends of private label brands, explore new trends in retail consumption, and delve into the digital and intelligent retail future. At the 19th National Chain Business Strategic Development Forum held at the exhibition, ZKONG showcases the latest full range of electronic shelf labels and LCD digital signage, and proposes referable practical digital store solutions, demonstrating the vitality of retail under the digital and intelligent transformation.

The Consumer-centered Retail Trend 
According to the "China Private Label Brand Development Research Report (2022-2023)" published by the Private Label Brand Industry Research Institute, the private label brand industry see growth in consumption, supply, and sales in 2021. High-income consumers have joined the ranks of private-label brand consumers, and post-90s and post-80s consumers have become the main force in consuming private-label products.

At the 2023 PLF Innovation Forum, Mr. Zhou Yong, the dean of the Private Label Brand Industry Research Institute, proposes that the essence of retail is experience and efficiency, which was unanimously recognized by the audience. For the retail industry, customers' feelings from entering the store to leaving the store rank first place, which should be worthy of companies’ attention.

As consumer shopping becomes more diverse, mobile, and immediate, traditional retail companies must follow consumer trends in order to iterate their business. For example, they need to analyze and confirm the segmented, niche, and personalized needs of customers more, reshape the construction and optimization of store products, introduce more technology equipment to provide more scenario-based experiences, and so on. We find that multi-channel and digital transformation has become the standard for many physical retail companies, and the application of various systems based on SaaS cloud architecture is becoming more common, especially in the process of the coordinated development of multiple online and offline stores.

Through the use of the ZKONG SaaS Cloud ESL solution, companies do not need to deploy local servers and can manage the product, promotion, inventory, and other information of multiple stores anytime and anywhere through a management platform. The rapid update of remote-operated ESLs frees store employees from the heavy workload of repetitive manual paper price tag production, maintenance, and replacement, and instead provides customers with more valuable and differentiated shopping services, achieving the shaping and transmission of a positive image for the company brand.

Empowering Iterative Consumer Trends
In the research and development of cloud electronic price tags, ZKONG has always led the way in setting new standards for future mainstream electronic price tags, continuously expanding their application boundaries. The latest Sparkle series digital signage recently released by ZKONG is the electronic price tag tailored for fresh marketing. It can not only help the retail implement progressive marketing strategies to improve efficiency and profits, but also provide consumers with a full-color and vivid fresh product shopping experience in a scenario-based manner.

The Sparkle series LCD double-sided electronic price tag has a super-rich material library built-in and supports free combinations of various file formats such as text, pictures, videos, web pages, etc., to comprehensively display information such as the price, specifications, origin, and consumption methods of fresh products from multiple angles, helping customers to better understand the products and make choices, thereby improving customer satisfaction.

The retail reset in the post-pandemic era cannot be achieved without innovation and exploration. ZKONG, which has won the title of "2023 China Retail Industry Outstanding Service Provider", has been continuously empowering the communication and interaction between the retail and consumers, actively promoting the stable and rapid development of the retail industry in the new changes of the circulation pattern in the era of digital intelligence.