The Past, Present & Future Of E Ink And ESLs With Bryan Chan | Spotlight Series

Foreign.

This Retail Technology Spotlight series podcast is brought to you by the Omnitalk Retail Podcast Network.

Ranked in the top 10% of all podcasts globally and currently ranked in the top 100 of all business podcasts on Apple Podcasts.

The Omnitalk Retail Podcast network is a network that we hope makes you feel a little smarter, but most importantly, a little happier each week too.

And this podcast is just one of the many great podcasts you can find from us here at OmniChodeau OmniTalk Retail alongside our Retail Daily minute, which brings you a curated selection of the most important retail headlines every morning and our signature podcast, the Retail Fast five that breaks down each week.

The top five headlines making waves in the world of omnichannel retailing that comes your way every Wednesday afternoon.

Hello everyone, I am one of your co hosts for today's interview, Chris Walton.

And I'm Anne Mazinga.

And we are pleased to introduce Brian Chan, the Senior Director of Business Development for the E Ink Corporation.

E Ink is the technology that is at the forefront of the recent push towards ESL adoption throughout retail.

And together with Brian, we're going to go deep on E Ink's history, why the industry is seeing the growth in adoption that it is, and where electronic ink and digital in store displays are going next.

So, Brian, with all that out of the way, thank you for joining us and welcome to omnitalk.

Thanks a lot, Chris.

Thanks a lot, Ann.

I would say I am a longtime listener, first time caller, so I really appreciate the opportunity to to come onto your show.

We're so happy to have you.

Thank you so much for making the time and for listening and supporting us as we go.

This is a topic that Chris and I have been wanting to have you on to cover for a long time.

But maybe just before we jump in, let's just have you explain for our listeners what E Ink is and kind of the origin story behind it, if you don't mind.

Great.

E Ink is a display technology, fundamentally.

We have a very long history starting back from 1997.

It's a spin out from MIT Media Lab.

There were some extremely bright individuals that discovered that they had a material that could change color.

It looked like paper and it was very low power and they spun out E Ink out of that.

And from the beginning till today, it's been a really great journey.

And it's very, very exciting to see how the technology has adopted new improvements over the years and has gone into many, many different applications.

Yeah, maybe take us through some of those applications.

Too and kind of where they thought it would land and where it's being used today.

Right.

So electronic shelf labels definitely was not at the top of the list when really the company spun out.

We've gotten lots of comments in the past about how is a very expensive novel technology going to replace a 2 cent paper tag.

So actually in the beginning we had thoughts of replacing newspapers.

Even at that time, readership was going in a decline.

Some of our earliest investors were media companies, print media companies.

And we thought we were going to save the newspaper print industry by having digital newspapers.

It's panned out just slightly different With Amazon and Jeff Bezos launching the Amazon Kindle.

We found a very nice home in books and just really tapped into the passion that people have in reading novels, reading books, and that's really what was our really first big success in applications.

Got it.

And I don't know if I told you this beforehand, but I actually did a case study on E.

Inc.

Back in 2003 as part of my Harvard Business School curriculum.

And I can remember there they had this.

Russ Wilcox was his name.

He came into the classroom, he talked all about it and they were talking through all the different use cases.

I think they were even looking at using it on meat or something like that at the time.

I don't remember what the exact business case parameters were, but.

But it's fascinating to see.

Yeah, it's fascinating to see it grow and watch it from that time to, you know, like you said, go into Amazon and books.

But I'm curious, Brian, like what, what happened in the marketplace that made people start to think, okay, yes, we can use this in a retail setting, particularly.

A lot of things have happened over the years.

One of the reasons why we kept a big, I guess, activity going on in this space is because while internally we didn't really understand retail retailers were coming to us almost from the good.

I'll tell you a funny story.

It was all about labor savings and operational savings.

And I was talking with the retailer, I can't say who it was, I don't even think I remember.

And they kept talking about belly loaders.

Belly loaders.

And I thought this was a technology in grocery stores.

And I looked it up on Google.

I couldn't find anything about it.

So maybe it was just this particular retailer.

So I had to politely just stop and ask, what's a belly loader?

It sounds interesting.

I have the same question, right, Nicholas?

Oh yeah.

If you have a case of Campbell Soup and you have a shelf tag or shelf.

A shelf Edge, the belly loader is the guy that comes in at the night and he props the kind of the, the, the, the carton of all the soup on his belly and then one by one loads it onto the shelves and basically the restocking guy.

And the point was these shelf tags need to be very robust because you have people like belly loaders that don't really think about in store logistics or technology that that's sitting on the shelf.

So, so that kind of opened up our eyes like, wow, if we wanted this to become a success, we not only need to think about the technology side, but how it fits in with an existing ecosystem that's robust, lasts a long time and doesn't feel like tech to the people that are working in the retail stores.

So, you know, just examples like that have helped us refine kind of the strategy and where we would invest in making improvements to the technology.

So one obvious one is battery life.

Nobody wants to replace batteries.

And there were a few thoughts that we could start, not we as E ink, but as with our system integrators, start a service where people can go and just replace batteries.

But quickly that became very obvious, would never work.

When you have 150,000 tags in a store, you're not going to replace 150,000 batteries every year.

So part of the technology push was to lower the power even more so you can get 5 years, 7 years battery life.

So that's something that retailers didn't need to worry about nor manage.

And then of course, color.

Color was really what has really back in 2013, that's when we launched our first color product.

That was just the third color with black, white and red.

And that is when we really started to see the ramp.

And that was another very practical example from the retailers with black and white technology.

They say, hey, we still need to walk around with our associates and put these little hang tags on the digital shelf labels.

And that really cut into the operational savings that they were expecting because promotions are such a big part of retail.

So then we knew that, hey, we needed a way to signal a promotion that also would result in some operational savings.

Got it.

And so where are you from a color standpoint now?

Like I was, that's funny, I was going to ask you about that.

Like, you know, did it, do you always start out with colors or like, you know, what, how has, how has the amount of colors grown?

It sounds like you got to three around 2012, 13.

But you know, what's happened since then?

Yeah.

So after the three color solution, e Ink launched a four color solution because yellow is another promotional color, I'm really happy to say.

Right.

Yellow and red, those are the only two that are kind of needed for, for retail.

But really happy to say I'm very proud of the team.

We have a full color solution now.

We have actually two, three technologies that are, that are full color.

Spectra 6 Gallery and Kaleido.

So we have many options for colors depending on the application.

Spectra6 is focused on retail, Gallery is focused on our consumer products, and also Kaleido is our video rate color, which is really amazing.

Interesting, Interesting.

I want to ask you more about that later.

All right.

So Brian, one question that Ann and I had in preparing for this interview was it seems like Europe has been quicker to adopt electronic shelf labels than the US Is that estimation that Anna have true?

And if so, I'm curious why you.

Think that is absolutely true.

100% true.

Okay.

100% true.

Europe.

Without Europe, I don't think the, the ESL market would be where it is today.

Wow.

Asia is probably the second market.

Well, with Walmart jumping in now, I bet you the US Will become either number one or number two pretty quickly.

But in Europe, they were always much more progressive in their consideration for, let's say, environmental concerns, for energy savings.

And then labor costs in Europe tend to be a bit higher than in the U.S.

u.S.

Has traditionally been quite a low labor zone.

And then also in Europe, the regulations are a little bit more complicated.

In certain regions, the punishment for mispricing was a bit higher.

So that also added to the ROI calculation in Europe, which didn't really apply broadly in the US So it just made a lot more sense for European retailers to adopt electronic shelf labels before.

Before any other region.

Yeah, that surprises.

That surprises me.

I mean, so, so you're saying, Brian, that sustainability was really the, the first or the biggest thing that kind of started this impact in Europe was that that was kind of the driver or was a combination of all, all the things you talked about?

I think it is a combination.

Okay.

Sustainability has always been at the forefront in Europe and just operational efficiencies and doing things in an automated way has been a big push over there.

And I think that's due to high labor situations.

And they also want to be more productive.

Right.

So this also allows their existing, say, high wage labor force to be more productive, which is what you want in an organization.

Brian, how much does the setup of retail over in Europe impact?

The answer to this question too, I.

E.

Retailers are big by country as well as Here they're across many, many states, many different regulations.

How does that play into things?

That's a very insightful question.

In Europe, I've heard it say that a state in the US is like a country in Europe and many of the retailers who are national brands or have national presence in Europe can make decisions at a national level.

You would say you don't want to just roll out in individual states and not have a cohesive branding or a look and feel of your store.

In the US a national deployment means all states.

In Europe it means it's Germany or it's France or it could be Sweden.

So the decision making is a little bit easier because of geographic considerations.

It's much smaller, less stores, so slightly less capital investment.

And also by nature there's a little bit more homo, it's a little bit more homogeneous within countries in Europe than it is in the US So what applies to one store in one state?

It tends to apply to almost every store in every state in European countries.

So that's a little bit different situation there.

Which also helped with the adoption of ESLs.

So Brian, as we think about, you mentioned obviously Walmart leaning in heavily to ESL rollout across their stores here in the US you mentioned that that is kind of the US crossing the chasm.

And, and ESL is becoming more prevalent here.

What other data do you have besides, you know, Walmart moving forward that kind of supports that idea that we might start to see more, more ESLs here in the States.

Right.

So Walmart is, has always been interested, I believe, and they're an amazing company that is really technology focused.

But there was a lot of retailers that have come before that have done either deployments or proof of concept stores ranging from Target to Kohl's to Whole Foods Market, Schnucks, Hy Vee, all of these other retailers that maybe don't have the national presence that Walmart does.

A lot of them have deployed, I should say, or have trialed ESLs.

So Walmart is, I would say, the validating factor that all of these other retailers have, have put in all this extra effort.

And now that Walmart has, has jumped in, really has proven that all of the, the operational savings and the benefits to improvements to ROI have, have, are actually a reality and not just something that's theoretical.

Yeah, Brian, maybe even elaborate more on that for us.

Like what are the things that have happened specifically with cost with ROI that have changed that for the U.S.

because as you mentioned, we're, we're a much slower.

The benefit really needs to be there for us to move forward here in the US beyond you know, just sustainability as, as you know, European countries are more likely to move forward with something like this.

So what are those things that really pushed, pushed the US over the edge or Walmart in this case?

In this particular case, if I were to, I don't know exactly.

I'll just say that I'm not in the boardrooms at Walmart.

But in theory, from what I hear from all of our partners and from all the industry trade groups that we participate in, it is the ROI that sounds boring but the original ESL calculations in the US perhaps started at 36 months, then it moved to 26 months, then it moved to 18 months and at beginning of 18 months kind of return on investments.

So if you're going to spend, and I've heard this many times from retailers, if we have 150 million to spend, do we want to spend that on buying out all the ads of Sunday newspapers and a few commercials and billboards and getting the name out there for promotions, what's the return on ad spend there to revenue versus investing that same 150 million in infrastructure to reduce operational savings?

So when we were at a higher return, sorry a longer return on investment, then the calculation was easy.

I'd rather invest that money in something that provided something more immediate in terms of returns.

Then we started hearing 14 months and then we started hearing 12 months.

I don't think anyone will admit to 12 months.

And then I heard something as crazy as a nine month return for one retailer.

So if you have $150 million to invest as an organization and you see a technology that can have a 9 month ROI or even a 12 month ROI, it almost becomes a no brainer.

So I think that is really what the tipping point has been for retailers.

And they can also.

And that's from operational savings alone.

Okay, I was going to say yeah, they can also do more now too.

So you're getting more from them.

Do you think there's one thing like you mentioned promotions being able to be incorporated into this?

Do you think there's one thing that retailers were really like oh okay, Oper savings?

Yes.

But you know now we can you help them do pick to light, you know walking through people like what was the, the component of it that really you think set this in motion for the US retailers of all the benefits.

So I will be very conservative with, with this answer in the sense that we try to do operational savings alone.

Retailers are very tight lipped about how they Monetize other aspects of it, whether it's improved margins.

And there's, there are university papers on how you can have dynamic pricing to reduce waste, especially in groceries.

Yeah.

And there's also the promotional aspect of it.

What's really interesting that's kind of related to this point is in certain categories that have very fast price movement and very little differentiation in the product, we've seen those types of categories adopt ESL quickly and one example is in appliances.

So if you have a Home Depot versus a Lowe's versus a local airport appliance, which is an appliance retailer here in California, there's promotions all the time.

So we've seen electronic shelf labels and digital price tags be adopted in those categories a lot faster to be able to react to the very dynamic environment.

But in reality, we try to stay within the operational savings side and, and then everything else is gravy because we found that if we can prove that you get an ROI in just operational savings, everything else is margin for the retailers and, and I think that it becomes a no brainer for, for the decision.

So that's really interesting.

So you're saying when you go into the boardrooms, that's, that's how you're telling them to evaluate whether or not to, to, to deploy an electronic shelf label, for example.

Well, so I want to press you on that then because, and I understand what you're saying in terms of the time period to prove out the ROI coming down, but what are the hard things that are driving that state of the world?

How much of the tag costs come down?

As an example, does cloud computing factor into this?

I got to think it does.

Anything you can give us there, Brian?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think back when we started really having our first customers in this space.

So tag costs have come down.

I mean, that's, I'll jump to the conclusion that's another huge factor in kind of the explosion of growth.

I remember tags were regularly quoted at $20, $15, $12 per tag.

And if you have 50,000 tags in a store, 30,000 tags, you can imagine the cost per store.

Yeah, I won't even venture to guess what tag prices are now, but let's just say it's low enough to have companies like Walmart deploy and they feel that it's valuable and for a small size tag.

And when I say $15 per tag, this was for the smallest 2 inch tag that you can think about.

Right.

Not the big one, two colors and black and white.

So it was a tough sale for sure.

Um, so that's one of the hard things that have really factored into the access adoption.

And another thing is just we're in a much tougher and more competitive environment now in retail.

There's online.

People have been talking about omnichannel, as you probably know, for, for 15, 15 years now, ever since the on first online store started to come online.

And, and it's very competitive now with the tariff situation.

We're hearing that this unknown kind of tax situation, pricing may have to be even more dynamic depending on the way that the global economy has to kind of settle out.

So having a digital solution, a dynamic solution makes a lot of sense to be able to react to some of these external factors.

Right, right.

Yeah.

So let's talk about that because you mentioned it a couple times already.

So reactionary pricing.

I've heard behind closed doors that pricing accuracy is what was, is what really drives the roi.

When you get right down to it.

You know, you can prove it out with operations.

But what, where the smart retailers have invested in this, they've seen the value of what it can do from that for them in terms of pricing accuracy and promotional accuracy.

And if, if that's the case, why, why is that?

Brian.

I think you and Ann could probably have have a better answer than I can, but I've heard things where you could have as low as 50% compliance during a promotional period.

And I won't tell you the retailer, but they told me at one point that the associates were getting so in ingenious that during the promotion they wanted to, to enforce that, hey, once you put a, a tag on there, you scan the tag and you scan the barcode and they would log in the system.

I put the new tag up and what they were finding is that somebody had taped all the new tags, a single piece of paper and they just beep that one at a time without putting up any of the tags.

And they, they basically claimed I did my job, I put up all the new promotional tags and, and that was it.

But none of the promotion was up there now it was a major, major retailer and that was new to me.

I've always been a kind of a California Silicon Valley person.

So this, but this day to day reality is what retailers have to, to manage.

And, and I think that is one of the interesting things about this space that not only do you have to have a good strategy, but you have to have a good execution plan as well.

Right.

That's my takeaway from what you said, is that the operational dynamics are one thing, but Actually the compliance of the execution is also a very key part of why these are an important solution or potentially an important solution going forward.

Yeah, well, and Chris, remember we just talked to several people about the, the instituting the pricing software to help make sure that you're able to react to the changing dynamic, changing dynamics in the economy that Brian mentioned too.

And the number one thing that we heard from Clear Demand was like you have, you know, ESLs are the only way for this to be done.

Like you can, you can invest in pricing software like you're talking about being a key component in the boardrooms right now.

But in order for that investment to pay off, you need to have the compliance like you're talking about, you need to have technology in place in order for that to actually make a difference in the store and for things to get done.

Brian, I want to know where we go next.

Like what you.

I mean, do we have like six more color palettes coming out for E Ink?

Like what more can, can happen here?

What's the future look like?

The future is colorful.

I think that's the way to put it.

We have a lot of interest in our Spectra 6 products.

It's one many awards now.

It's a very stunning looking display.

The colors pop and we do feel that it is good enough for a retail media style or a promotional style display in the stores.

And what's beautiful about the E Ink technology is that it's so low power.

You have companies now talking about not even needing to recharge the battery ever.

They put a small solar cell in the bezel.

So it's very small.

You don't even see it from a consumer's perspective.

And you have a perpetual display that is untethered and you can place it everywhere.

And that really has been resonating with the people that we've been talking to.

Just adding power and running power to anywhere in the store is a nightmare.

It's a headache.

In fact, it's a showstopper and many times.

So to have something that you can hang from the ceiling just on two pieces of rope or chain, or you could roll it around anywhere in the store and just place it anywhere and it just works.

I think that is really where we see the future and hopefully that is what enables both the retailers to see a better return and see the value of this type of technology and be able to actually plan their future revenue strategies around, around digital displays.

Got it right.

So that, that makes me think of two things.

One, when you talk like that, I'm thinking about retail media.

So I have to imagine this is part and parcel what you guys are thinking about in terms of a way to help the retailers capture retail media.

But then two, I'm curious, I want to get your thoughts on this because Ann and I have had a lot of discussions on our weekly podcast.

A lot of questions about the investments going towards large screen video displays, you know, that require power and electrical cords and all that kind of stuff, that and maintenance.

And so, you know, we've always been skeptical of that.

Like do you think we're right to be skeptical of that or how do you, how do you look at that question?

You are right to be skeptical.

And I think, okay, with the retail media in store, physical stores, and I'm a hardware guy at heart, so I really love everything in the physical world.

And when we say retail media, there tends to be a, a notion that it's online, online ads, which certainly that's where the, the revenue is coming from today.

But we certainly hope that this will spill over into the physical world.

And for the exact reason why you just mentioned, Chris, about having running electrical cords and TVs and these LED walls, that's a big investment.

But today's environment or Today's promotional collateral, 90% is still paper.

So we're going to go with the same playbook.

And we think this will be a winning strategy is that replace all your paper promotions with a digital equivalent.

And there if you think about how some retailers hang promotions from their ceiling.

Yeah, I could only imagine how much that costs.

And, and every time they have to change campaigns, not just the cost of printing, but the labor alone.

So if you have a solution for that and it makes sense from an operational perspective first, then the retail media side does become gravy.

And even if that is the real compelling reason why people adopt digital signs in their stores, if you can prove out first that operationally there's a win, then I think we'll see an avalanche again.

Another big, huge kind of a turnover going from traditional paper to digital.

Well, and now that it's possible too, Brian, I mean, I think I just had Chris Ward, the head of stores for co op in the UK last week and he was talking about like it wasn't until there was the blue, their signature blue color that was available on these types of screens that they really were feeling like, okay, now we can go through with it because you can start to replace place some of the things that you're talking about in store, from promos to, you know, to any future retail media that they want to do you, you had those things had to be in place before you get full adoption.

Is that something that you're seeing is happening with some of the other retailers as well?

Absolutely.

And that's, that is what we're, we're seeing.

Certain retailers have very specific requirements and in order for them to adopt and we need to provide a certain technology.

But once they deploy.

This is the exciting part.

Right now it's for, for the, especially for, for electronic shelf labels.

Mostly it's pricing and promotion, but when you have full color, higher resolution tags that are coming in the future, you can imagine those small screen areas also becoming some form of monetization strategy for, for the retailer.

So that's really exciting as well.

So I think the future is, is very rosy, I think for the industry as a whole and I am very excited about it.

I think retail is what drives, it's what we grew up with, right.

Going to the malls, going to these giant department stores.

And when I travel to other countries, retailers are thriving.

It's packed shoulder to shoulder.

So locally here, I just think that we're not seeing the same kind of energy.

But I hope that in the U.S.

you know, part of the benefits that we bring through, like say operational savings, make them, you know, enjoy their profits for all their hard work, that retail will begin to thrive even more here in the US as well.

Yeah, I mean, this is a really great conversation to end on because, you know, Ann particularly gets me thinking like, you know, and this is one of the reasons I love doing this job because it's helps me think about things from the perspective of an executive making these decisions.

And what tools would I want to be armed with if I came to the table having these discussions with somebody like you or an ESL provider or even an in store TV monitor provider, for lack of a better way to put it.

And I think what I would say is like the framework for me after listening to this conversation would be, you start with the digital shelf labels because of all the reasons we talked about, they've been happening in Europe forever.

And then I wouldn't leap forward to the in store digital screens, you know, the television screens, because, because that's too big of a leap right now.

There's so many things that are unproven there.

And you're going to look back on that investment, go wait, what am I doing?

And instead I would take the approach of like, what is all this, you know, the potentially static imagery throughout my store that can be converted to an electronic display and Learn from that and go in that direction first and then potentially bite off even more down the road.

But I think that, I think that's an important framework to share with our audience.

100%.

Brian.

Anyway, any closing thoughts on that?

I agree, 100%.

It is a big leap.

And I listen to your show regularly and I really appreciate, Chris, the reality that you bring to the situation because people talk about how certain technologies or certain revolutions are going to happen in retail, but retail really is a brick and mortar, literally operation and technology, while is amazing, it can't solve all of the problems.

So if we tackle the real world problems that retailers are facing without introducing more complexity, I think that is probably the winning strategy.

And I think you've been kind of beating that drum for a long time.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And I think to your point too, keeping your focus on the metrics that you want to measure too, particularly the operational side of it, without getting hung up on all the increased revenue side of it, is important as, as well.

I mean, and you and I know we've seen, we've seen so many failed attempts at screens.

I think retailers like to equate digital in store with lots and lots of moving screens, you know, and I think that's just, I think that's the wrong way to think about things.

You have to think about what is the purpose and what are you trying to solve for.

Yeah, for sure.

I think the great, the great point that you made was investing in the shelf labels first.

Getting, getting to understand the ins and outs of how those work and the.

Benefits get your prices right for your consumers.

Yeah, right.

Then open up not only the ROI to start testing these in other places or in other use cases, but also just the understanding of the flexibility and what you really can do and what's going to be possible in the future here like Brian was just talking about.

Brian, thank you so much for taking the time with us today.

It was so insightful.

The history, you know, everything that you, you covered today was so wonderful regarding E Ink and digital shelf labels.

But if people want to get in touch with you, there's more they want ask you about.

I imagine there are several questions that they'll have.

What's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, people can reach me on my, my LinkedIn.

Just find me Brian Chan.

Brian with a Y.

Chan C H A N.

And you could find me on, on LinkedIn.

That's probably the best way to, to contact me.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Yes.

I can attest that you're very available through that medium so well, Brian, that wraps us up.

Thank you so much to Brian Chan of E.

Inc.

For sitting down with us today.

And thanks to everyone out there listening to this episode of our ongoing Retail Technology Spotlight podcast series.

Please let us know what you thought of our interview with Brian on social media and also how we can do better.

And as always, on behalf of all of us here at omnitalk, be careful out there.