20,000 square meters – one control device: Verkkokauppa.com, Finland

Isn't it only natural to sell digital devices using digital price displays?

Verkkokauppa.com is a leading Finnish electronics retailer operating both web-store and brick and mortar stores. Their ambitious aim is to display exactly the same prices simultaneously in both channels.

In 2011, Verkkokauppa.com opened their newest, gigantic-sized store with 20,000 square meters of floor space in Helsinki. They wanted to install the new generation EllaRetail labels in the store to solve certain challenges experienced in earlier stages of testing electronic labels:

• Dependency on supplier software system and file exchange protocol caused inefficiencies in store processes;
• Poor visibility of the older-generation labels caused too many customer complaints;
• The breakage of labels and short battery life had led to unexpectedly high maintenance costs.

Now Verkkokauppa.com's vision of displaying the same prices simultaneously in all sales channels has become reality. All old labels in all stores have been replaced with EllaRetail labels. Prices and stock information are changed dynamically every 30 or 60 minutes, 24 hours a day in all sales channels, and the demanding digital-age customers can really see the price without trouble.

EllaRetail solution is completely integrated to Verkkokauppa.com's other operating systems, making daily operations fluent and efficient. Battery lifetime has improved significantly, thus reducing the life-time cost of the system.

On top of all the above: Even the biggest store with the 20,000 square meters can be operated with only one radio-communication device as the access point between central data and local system. Now that's what we can call user-friendliness.