As environmental concerns grow, the traditional use of paper tickets for pricing in grocery stores is becoming increasingly problematic. Retailers are now realising the financial and environmental costs of managing paper, with thousands of A4 sheets being used and often ending up in landfills. In response, many Australian retailers are adopting Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs) to reduce paper waste and improve efficiency.
ESL systems provide numerous benefits, such as reducing paper waste, ensuring accurate price updates, and eliminating issues with paper tickets falling off shelves. A reliable ESL solution can last for a decade, offering a significant return on investment.
Supermarkets Embrace Digital Pricing
Retailers across Australia are leveraging ESL technology to reduce manual labour and respond quickly to pricing changes. Independent supermarket owners are finding ESLs especially valuable for combatting staff shortages and freeing up time previously spent updating up to 15,000 individual price tags in each store.
FoodWorks, part of the Australian United Retailers network, is already leading the digital pricing charge, with multiple stores—Normanton, Estella, and Yackandandah—having installed ESLs. More stores are expected to follow suit in 2024 with the Pricer electronic shelf labelling system from OZESL.
Robert Markezic, national operations manager for Australian United Retailers, highlights the advantages of digital pricing, including creating new opportunities for staff and enabling dynamic pricing strategies. “The ease and speed of electronic tickets has allowed stores to pursue more dynamic pricing strategies that can quickly respond to market and customer demands,” he said.
The Business Case for ESLs
According to Louis George of OZESL, ESLs help retailers by:
- Redeploying labour from time-consuming tasks to customer service and shelf stocking.
- Reducing printing costs and waste associated with paper labels.
- Maintaining pricing integrity, ensuring accuracy across point-of-sale systems and in-store labels.
Retailers are responding to the labour shortage by using ESLs to streamline operations. Instead of spending days changing paper labels, stores can now implement up to 5,000 price changes in 10 minutes, allowing them to quickly adapt to promotions, inventory shifts, and price adjustments.
For more information on how ESL systems can transform your store, contact sales@ozesl.com.au or visit ozesl.com.au
OZESL & Pricer
Pricer are a Swedish company who have been producing a reliable ESL solution for in excess of 30 years. In that time many competitors have come and gone however Pricer still remain a strong market leader within the ESL space, innovating new and improved solutions for the benefit of retailers.
OZESL/NZESL have been proud partners with Pricer for 15 years now and with ESL’s as our main business we are always assessing the market wanting to provide the best solution to our customers. ESL’s are our business and we sleep well at night knowing that our customers are using the Pricer system.
