Selected work · operator track record
Electronic shelf labels: a rollout that reached 150+ stores across 10 countries, delivered.
We turned a shelf-label rollout that was being sold as paper-and-ink savings into a data, geo-location and supply-chain platform. This is team pedigree: operator work our team built over years inside IKEA, and the foundation the firm now stands on.
The problem.
Electronic shelf labels were stuck. Internally they were framed as a way to save on paper and ink, a small cost line that could never justify a global rollout. The business case was thin, and a thin case does not move a company that size.
The decision.
We refused the paper-savings framing. A price tag is a sensor and a position in the store. We rebuilt the case as a data, geo-location and supply-chain platform: NFC and RFID for live inventory, in-store navigation for customers, and logistics signal for the supply chain. Then we proved it fast, securing a €200K pilot budget from the CFO and shipping the first store in two days.
What we built.
An NFC and RFID shelf-label system that carried far more than a price: live inventory location, customer navigation, and a feed into supply-chain logistics, deployed toward 400+ stores. Hardware, software and the store operations to adopt it, not a slide. The pilot ran live in a New York store within two days of go-ahead.
The numbers.
On the floor it showed up as speed: price changes cut from 5 minutes to 20 seconds, full-store updates from a week to 5 minutes, and staff training from 2 hours to 30 minutes. The reframing, not the hardware, is what unlocked the value.
Questions, answered straight.
How much do electronic shelf labels cost?
At The 34 Group we budget an electronic shelf label rollout on six lines: the labels, the base stations and network, the software licence, integration with the pricing system, installation, and the store team's time. Label prices alone vary widely. Mordor Intelligence (December 2025) puts hardware at USD 15 to 25 per tag, a market average, and USD 5 to 15 per label is the range integrator benchmarks reported by MMCG Invest (May 2026) give. The same note lands a large store in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars. Size, display type and volume move the number. Operating results carry the business case: in the programme our operators ran inside IKEA, one price change went from 5 minutes to 20 seconds, and repricing the whole store from a week to 5 minutes.
Want this thinking on your problem?
The skill here was not the tags. It was refusing the small framing and finding the platform underneath. That is what a FOCAL Diagnostic does for your situation.