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Innovating the In-Store Experience: The Future of Electronic Shelf Labels with Hanshow America

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Today's episode features an enlightening conversation between our host RetailWire BrainTrust Panelist Brian Cluster, industry marketing director at Stibo Systems, and Folkwin Haye, Key Account Sales Director for Hanshow America - a trailblazer in innovative in-store tech solutions.

In this discussion, Folkwin and Brian delve into the transformative world of electronic shelf labels (ESLs) and their game-changing impact on the retail industry, particularly in the DIY retail sector.

Listen as Folkwin reveals how ESLs are revolutionizing retail operations, from vastly simplifying pricing strategies to creating superior customer experiences. Learn how these digital tools play an integral role in the retail industry's journey towards comprehensive digital transformation.

In this episode, Folkwin shares insights on Hanshow’s innovative solutions, such as ESLs equipped with LED lights and geolocation capabilities. These features are transforming retail experiences and operations by enabling efficient product location and real-time access to accurate product information.

Folkwin also gives a sneak peek into Hanshow America's participation in the upcoming National Hardware Show in Las Vegas. Attendees can expect an opportunity to experience firsthand the durability and unique features of their ESLs, tailored to meet the specific needs of DIY retail.

Whether you're a retailer seeking to gain a competitive edge through advanced technology or you're simply intrigued by the intersection of retail and tech, this episode promises fresh insights and forward-thinking discussions.

Don't forget to hit the subscribe button for more insights from retail industry leaders. Join our daily newsletter at RetailWire for the freshest news and a community of retail enthusiasts.

RetailWire is the retail industry's premier source for news, analysis, and discussion. With a focus on the latest trends, technology, and consumer behavior, RetailWire provides a platform for industry experts and thought leaders to share their insights and perspectives. Whether you're a retailer, supplier, or service provider, RetailWire is your go-to destination for staying informed and ahead of the curve.

Be sure to leave us a comment and let us know what you think. You might even hear your comment read on the next episode!

To learn more, or to join our Daily Discussions, visit RetailWire.com.

Speaker 1:

Okay, welcome to Retail Wire Podcast, your go-to source for all things retail. Our podcast is the one-stop-shop for the latest trend. I'm your host for today, brian Cluster, and I'm an industry marketing director at Stebo Systems for this retail and CPG industries. My role is to support our customer success and master data management and getting the most out of their data. With more than a couple decades of experience working on strategy, delivering analytics and helping with digital transformations, and especially talking about data, I'm super excited about the topic today, and today I'm joined with Folkwin Hei, and he is the key account sales director for Henshaw America. Background and management, consulting, it and project management. He specializes in digital transformation, it strategy and process optimization, and you worked for the company for 10 years in markets around the world. That's very exciting. I think the audience is really going to get a lot out of it today. Can you tell me a little bit about your role in Henshaw as a company?

Speaker 2:

Sure, brian. Thank you for the nice introduction. So my name is Folkwin Hei. I've been with the company for over 10 years, as you just said, helping this company to become a real global player when it comes to in-store technology solutions, digital solutions. I've been doing this all over the world, starting in China over 10 years ago, moving to Europe where for ESL it was a more mature market. They've been using this type of solution for over 10 years already. For us, it was the first important market to get a piece of. It's been going very well. We got now offices all over Europe and I think we are probably the largest ESL supplier in that market at the moment.

Speaker 2:

And for us, looking at the market globally, we feel that the next most important market for electronic shelf labels and digital solutions will be here in the United States. Here it's not a very common solution yet. It's not widespread. You don't see it in every store. There's a few stores that are testing, there's a few that have rolled out, but it's still early times, I think. And I think if you have looked at what happened here in the past years with the labor shortages, with the volatility when it comes to raw material prices and also logistical prices. The need to be able to price faster and more accurately and not using labor to do it, has become more needed, so to say, in this market, and we see that because a lot of retailers have approached us in the last year to see how we can help them to digitize their pricing operations.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thanks for that background. I think in my experience I've seen electronic shelf labels at some specialty store, some high-end grocery retail and a few other spots some of the electronic stores here and there, and I know it's going to be growing in DIY retail as well. But for those in the audience that are not really aware of where electronic shelf labels have grown or have changed over the years, can you tell a little bit about how? Just getting back to the basics, how does electronic shelf labels create better shopping experiences for shoppers out there? I think that would be a really good way to start.

Speaker 2:

Sure, let's start with the basics. So electronic shelf labels are little e-paper screens that replace the price tag in the store. So now retailers they use a little piece of paper to display the prices, which is a manual process that have to print a piece of paper and an actual person has to go to the store, find the product and replace this little piece of paper. And if you look at the price changes that a store has every week, it does take some time. So the basic functionality is to remove the labor that it takes to replace price tags, to remove some of the costs that you have for printing and distributing the price tags, but it also improves the accuracy of the pricing in your store. When you're dependent on a manual process people changing price tags it will go wrong. Sometimes they will forget to change the price tag, a price tag can fall on the floor and then to know if your store let's say, a good DIY store might have like 50,000 SKUs, for example, so to go through your store and to verify whether all your prices are correct. It's a task. It's not easy to do and what we found from studies actually is that on average, I think, about 7% of the prices in any given store that uses paper price tags is incorrect. So besides being able to more quickly change the price, you also increase your price accuracy in the store. So these are the basic functionalities of ESL and they have been the benefits for many years already.

Speaker 2:

However, esl's, they have evolved over time. You know, in the old days there were little LCD screens, black and white, and if you changed the product name you still had to stick a sticker on the bottom because it would only display the price. Now they're fully graphic e-paper screens. They can display multiple colors. Our latest generation of electronic shelf labels can display six different colors. They are fully graphic so you can show images, barcodes, qr codes, anything on the ESL actually. But they have more functionality so they have increased their battery life. Our latest labels they will last you for 10 to 15 years, which is a very long time.

Speaker 2:

And also the electronic shelf labels to have a little LED light in the corner and this LED light helps to improve a lot of operational things in the store and I'll give you an example. It's in store picking. You know an employee needs to pick a certain product for an online order and some stores they choose to do that from the actual store instead of a warehouse to increase sales per square feet of their store and to help them locate products faster, we can make this light flesh so they can find it immediately. You know, normally with supermarkets I use the use case of an aisle with wine and picker needs to choose to find the right bowl of wine, which can take some time. But I can imagine that for a DIY store you have walls of screws, for example, or other products that look quite similar. So you know where you can find this product in the store. But to actually locate the exact item that you're looking for correctly, if the price tag will start flashing, it will help you to locate that much faster.

Speaker 2:

So, besides helping stores digitize pricing, the ESL also helped them to increase the operational efficiency of a lot of processes that they have in the store and, together with the retailers, we will look at the processes and see how this technology has, or the digital display and the LED light and the geolocation functionality that our labels have to see how it can make their work more efficient.

Speaker 2:

So electronic shelf labels help with digitizing the pricing, it helps with making work easier for employees in the store and it helps giving consumers a better customer experience in the store To have more accurate information to display. They can retrieve additional information by scanning a QR-Cade on the ESL, for example, and with the light we could also help consumers find products in the store and I think especially for DIY. You know it's not my daily supermarket where I go every day and I know where to find everything. I mean a DIY store for me personally, I only visit a couple times a year when I have a project going on, so I don't know where everything is. And finding products, I think, is a big added benefit of ESL specifically for DIY stores.

Speaker 1:

Yeah no, no, it's great and you know, when I started my career, I was at Ace hardware, which is a DIY retailer. I remember actually putting up the price tags. You're putting your back to the customer, so a lot of customers don't want to interrupt people because they're trying to get their work done. But at the same time, then the customers are, you know, taking longer to find what they need or maybe have some questions. But a key thing to think about is you know, how does it, how does the in-store retail professional interact with this technology? Because I think this technology is gonna be interesting. It helps the store, in my mind. It helps the store catch up with the digital world, because now you have more data right at shelf. It's kind of what you're used to online or in app. But how does, how does the retail professional interact with this data and how does it help customers? Can a little bit, can talk a little bit about more about this, maybe even in a DIY study.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, sure, I mean. Maybe I can use an actual example of a retailer who recently installed in Europe. So in France you have the largest DIY retailer called Le Roi Merlin, or an English, leeroy Merlin, and we've recently done a full installation with them, using a lot of the capabilities that our labels have. And it's been awarded as well. Actually, recently, during the Eurosis 2024, which is the the largest retail show in Europe, le Roi Merlin and Hanshaw were awarded an award for best in-store solution and pops a pie of retail 2024.

Speaker 2:

And we wanted, because you know they really got a lot out of the, the technology that we have to offer for them, for example, and and they managed to really increase their in-store efficiency and customer satisfaction scores by using this technology. And we help them customers with ease finding product, being able to access real-time pricing, but also help them to receive personalized promotions directly on their smartphones, which has and empowered the consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions. How it works in in real life, I can I can give you some examples. So, store associate, usually they have a PDA or a handheld device to do things in the store. They need to reorder things and and other things in the store, interacting with the SKUs and we install an app on that, the Hanshaw app, so to say, on on the PDA, which helps them to interact with our system. So let's say, I need to restock a product on the shelf yeah.

Speaker 2:

I don't know exactly where I need to put it.

Speaker 2:

I can scan the barcode on the product that I that I need to restock, and the corresponding light of the of the of the ESL will start to flat and I know exactly where to put it, saving me some time.

Speaker 2:

Also and that's kind of unique our labels have a geolocation capability means that this ESL knows where it is in the store and and our system is able to locate it wherever it is, and it helps employees to to to find certain things. Other scenarios for store employees are in store picking, so instead of restocking it, they need to take products, mainly because they have online order. You know, in America we've also integrated for supermarkets with Instacart, for example, so that these pickers can locate the products faster in the store. We have done some studies and we found that we saved nearly 50% of the time if you use a little flashlight to help people locate products. So these are some benefits that we help with them. And another thing, especially for DIYs if consumers have better access to more information and to locate products, it gives them a much better customer experience of well and it frees up a little bit of time for the employees.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's some great examples and I've had some experience. Even you know, I love the wine example because it's just a wall of confusion of wine.

Speaker 1:

It's like a thousand red wines and all these labels and it's really hard to find. So being able to find that one for that customer, it's extraordinary. And I've had the same issue in the vitamin category. I know it's not DIY, but there's multiple sizes of the same brand and you're trying to find the right slot for it. So that's really helpful and I really like some of the examples. You hear that. I've really heard that light. That's like a unique new use case I think I've never really heard of. So I think that's going to be something that retailers should think about.

Speaker 1:

Can we go into a little bit more detail? Now we're getting in. You know we're the on the getters point. Now I'd like to get into some more details about some of the innovation you guys are doing, because it seems like you're at the cutting edge, so you're catering to specific retailers. So what kind of additional detail do you have on how ESLs aid in the daily operations of retail? Say, maybe even some more examples of DIY, because DIY is kind of a tougher environment. You have more skews, it can be more confusing. So if you have some additional ideas and some innovation plans, that would be really interesting to hear.

Speaker 2:

Sure, sure. So let me think specifically for DIY stores. There are actually quite some use cases and I think for DIY store, one thing you need to think about is that A lot of products that you sell are seen as by consumers kind of as a commodity, right? So if I buy a power tool, I don't care where I buy the power tool, I just want to have the cheapest one, right. And since they are costly tools, I'm gonna as a consumer, I'm probably gonna look it up on the internet to see where I can get the best price, you know. So for a store like that, you have to realize how important your pricing strategy is and how you want to enable yourself to be competitive with pricing. So what we've seen from our experience with a lot of DIY stores one big reason for them to buy, you sell is to stay competitive in the market with the specific product categories and to be able to change the price whenever you want.

Speaker 2:

If you look at online competition it's digital. There's a lot of algorithms and tools and other things that are used to change the price based on what's happening online to stay competitive. They're all kind of reacting on each other and on a lot of factors and it goes really quick. You know it's quite common for an online store to change their price daily or even have day part pricing, and in the offline world, without ESL, it's just not possible. You know you cannot change your price every day, or a couple times a day, and ask your employees to do that. So you need to think as a retailer on a strategic level on how important pricing is for your overall strategy and how digitization is going to enable you to be more competitive and to use a lot of additional strategies that are just not possible right now. I'll give you an example, for here you have Black Friday, you know. So on Black Friday you have some specific offers and everybody lines up in the morning and they're like fighting to get the deal right, and it's because all the deals are activated when the store opens. Now what you could do is have special promotions, start at specific times of the day and you can all pre-program it in the ESL and have some executed at an instance, for example.

Speaker 2:

So you really have to think about what other possibilities is this digitization going to give me, and I think also the positioning functionality, so being able to find things. It's a huge added benefit for the store associates, but also for the consumers. So this positioning is really becoming more and more important, I think, for a better customer experience. Other things that I can think of for the employees is just they'll be able to get a lot more direct information about their products and everything, because each ESL is a digital window from the skew to the employee and the consumer, and they'll also be able to receive back feedback. So it's possible to interact with an ESL and know who is interacted with what ESL at what moment.

Speaker 2:

It's possible to download a coupon from the ESL to your phone and use the coupon. And because it's a digital way, the store starts to see what customers have downloaded what coupons and which ones they have used and which ones they have not used. And this is all data. I guess that interests you as well, that you don't know when you send out paper folders to consumers. You don't know who looked at which folder, you don't know who cut out which coupon and then didn't use it, and all this data becomes available when you start to digitize it. So we will also work with couponing companies to digitize this whole process. I think in the United States it's Catalina that does that for example, and we work together with them.

Speaker 1:

I'm really interested about this because I put on my Stebo hat for a second Stebo systems hat.

Speaker 1:

We work with a lot of customers to bring in data from suppliers all their product data, all the hazardous materials, the brochures, all the data, the warnings or ingredients or nutritional information, and then it goes out to the apps, to the website, even the social media, and then it goes to the shelf and typically with the paper shelf you're only getting 2% of the data that people have been working on for six months to get that product ready to be sold.

Speaker 1:

I think what I'm kind of hearing is electronic shelf labels now can. Obviously they're going to display more than price. They have the ability to do the QR code, so now you don't have that artificial barrier of the digitalization at the shelf. You're giving them equal footing to when they're at home, almost to get a lot of data to. If they're in the DIY, they're, they're probably trying to understand what's hazardous about this product or whatever. So you're just opening up more information. I think what a lot of consumers want are into researching more about the product, so this is a good way of opening up that, those ideas for consumers.

Speaker 2:

No, and we have a reference. I mean another possibility. I remember was a customer in France you can put customer reviews on your label and have them linked automatically to your reviews that you have online. So like one, two, three store, five star reviews, you can put that on the ESL. There was another retailer that actually put competitor pricing on the ESL, showing their own price and like three or four competitors and their pricing I think that might be something that's that's allowed in the United States as well and they put it on the ESL and they just got it from the internet and because it's digital, it's always up to date. Yeah, and about ESL I for especially for DIY stores and retailers.

Speaker 2:

I just want to explain a little bit about the few features that would be important to look for for a good solution when it comes to electronic shelf labels, because there are many suppliers in the market right now. And first thing you need to look at is battery life. So you install millions of labels if you have a change store and you don't want to change the battery, it's a lot of work. It's a manual job to need to go and change the battery. If you do that, it's a lot of work, so you need to have long battery life, just the first thing to look out. These days, a good solution should last you for at least 10 years on battery, which is a long time for any device to work right, especially if they run on batteries. So the second thing you need to look out for is the durability, because retail environments are rough environments. There are trolleys in DIY stores, I imagine. There are forklift trucks driving around. Consumers are not the most friendly to stuff. Anything that can break will break, and so you need to keep the breakage at the lowest percentage possible.

Speaker 2:

And so for our labels, the latest one we've developed. They have a unibody design. There's resin in it. You can drive it far over it literally, and it won't break. It's really important factor that's often under looked when you look at the labels. Our labels are also 100% waterproof, for example. Their airtight also has to do with the longevity of the battery, for example. And then you need to look at the functionality and also how the company that's going to supply you the labels is going to help you get the most out of it, because, as I mentioned, it's going to do a lot more than changing the price. Every store has their own processes. They all do it a little bit different, and this functionality needs to be integrated with the processes. So, yeah, their efficiency gets better. You know, and those are a few things I think you really need to look out for when you choose one of those, when any sales apply.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thanks for your clarity. That really helps people, I think, really pinpoint and plan how they're going to go after ESLs for their retail. So I've really enjoyed the conversation so far and I've learned a lot about electronic shelves, labels. I thought I knew a lot, but when you provide all that detail and you know how it really helps the IY, I think it's really interesting and I could see how it benefits both the retail, the customer and even the in-store associate, because that makes their life a lot easier. So let's look ahead for you and your company Henshaw. What's next for you guys in the US that people would look out for you in the market?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I think what's next is actually the national hardware shelves that's going to take place in Vegas later this month. We will have a booth there. I will be there myself personally, so I would like to invite anybody who's listening to this to come by our booths and have a look at what we have to offer. We have tailored the booth specifically for the DIY stores to display the robustness of the ESL. We've also developed a specific accessory for electronic shelf labels, which will offer additional protection from forklift trucks. We've managed to create something that can actually help labels to survive impact from forklift trucks and just some other solutions that we specifically developed for DIY, and I would like to invite you all to come have a look and see what we have to offer. And on top of that, I want to use this time to make clear that we don't only do electronic shelf labels. We are a digital store provider.

Speaker 2:

We do a lot of solutions that help to digitize your in-store operations, and you can think about the first step we do usually is ESL, the digitizer pricing, because you will get a lot of benefit out of it. The second step is to digitize your marketing with in-store screens Still marketing. To date, they use a lot of posters and by digitizing that, you will get a lot of added benefits as well. And then we have an additional step with AI and AI cameras. So by placing AI cameras in the store, you have a lot of additional benefits, for example, keeping your planogram up to date, knowing out of stocks, and it really helps you to close that last gap. That's done now by people, but not too efficiently. At the moment there are a lot of stores that struggle with keeping their planograms up to date and gap checking to make sure there's product on the shelves at all times.

Speaker 1:

Great. Thank you so much. I've learned a lot. I'm sure the audience have learned a lot. Thanks for being on the show today. Do you have any last remarks that you'd like to wrap up before we close out this episode?

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, please have a look at our website, handshowcom. Come visit us during the NHS show and do not hesitate to reach out to us. You can always write us an email at infohanshowcom and we'll make sure to reply as soon as possible.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, folkwin. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for taking the time everyone to listen to today's news. Listen to today's episode of the Retail Wire Podcast. If you found this discussion available, don't forget to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform and for latest news, engaging discussion in a vibrant community of retail enthusiasts, be sure to join our daily newsletter at retailwirecom. See you next time. Thank you so much.

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