For more than 30 years, B&H Photo Video has been the “go-to” place for the best prices and service for photographic, audio, video, computer and home entertainment. In fact, its New York superstore is the largest non-chain photo and video equipment store in the US.

While an average of 5,000 people visit its store daily, B&H also has a high profile online and a popular social media presence, with over 400K followers on Twitter and close to 700K on Facebook. Because of this, most of the store’s sales are transacted via the Internet. To better manage and match the speed at which it can amend prices online, ensure in-store and online prices align and reduce the amount of time its associates spend on labelling, B&H knew it needed an agile price and promotion solution that would also enhance the in-store experience.

That is why the team at B&H turned to Displaydata’s three-color, fully graphic ESLs to help align its pricing and promotions with speed, accuracy and consistency. The installation at B&H includes more than 18,000 of our colorful Chroma labels to accommodate different areas and shelf edges within the retail space, and all managed via our centrally managed enterprise platform. With our platform, B&H can quickly design, amend and send updates to one or all labels – in seconds. In addition, the retailer has created its own software for their handheld computers utilising our Dynamic Command API. This allows store associates to scan products and link them to a planogram location, ensuring the right labels are updated as and when needed.

Tangible Results in Key Areas of the Store

Since B&H implemented our ESLs, they have seen tremendous benefits across three categories:

• Technical: The B&H store environment can be a demanding space for ESLs, with thousands of products transmitting wirelessly using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and using the 2.4 GHz wireless spectrum used by most ESL vendors. Communication, however, between our software and ESLs take place in the sub-1 GHz RF range, eliminating interference and providing more stability.

• Operations: Our ESLs require less hardware than any other ESL vendor, with no requirement for any servers in-store. The solution is centrally managed using a single instance of our Dynamic Central software, and the wireless communicators are used at B&H to manage updates to their ESLs. As well, the labels can communicate their status to report on updates have been made and provide details such as battery voltage and temperature.

• Marketing: In the highly competitive electronics market, where prices change constantly, and customers regularly showroom, our ESLs allow B&H to stay competitive by allowing the retailer to change prices in seconds, on any shelf-edge. The ESLs also enable B&H to build trust with its customers, with pricing that is always accurate and consistent online and in-store. Furthermore, store associates are freed from time-consuming manual label changes to spend more time assisting customers.

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“In today’s online world, prices across retailers fluctuate constantly and B&H strives to ensure we keep up with those prices to offer the best shopping experience and the most competitive prices to our customers, even in our New York super store. Using Displaydata’s enterprise solution, we can easily align online and in-store prices and further improve the shopping experience for customers by offering timely price and promotions, in seconds. What’s more our associates are free from labelling tasks to spend more time with customers.”

Gaurav Hemdev, VP Applications, B&H Photo Video.