According to Coresight Research reported in 2025, U.S. retailers lose an average of 5.5% of their revenue due to store-level inefficiencies such as pricing errors and mislabeled tags. Pricing mistakes are a significant part of these inefficiencies, eroding margins, customer trust, and leading to abandoned sales. These expensive errors frequently result from the retailers using old manual labeling systems that are not only slow in updating but also prone to human errors. Retailers can save a great deal of money and increase their efficiency and profits with intelligent shelf labels such as the Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) solutions by Minewtag which provide them with a smart method of reducing such losses.
The Evolution of Shelf Labels in Retail
An average supermarket is stocked with more than 30,000 products. Just maintaining a price list of all these articles was a problem for the retailers. Let's see how the changes in shelf labeling over time have been the solution of the problem.
Traditionally, store employees would write by hand the prices on small tags or on the product packaging itself. This process took a lot of time and was error-prone. The increasing size of the stores had made it necessary to have a better system.
The price gun invention in the 1960s was a major turning point. These handheld label printers allowed employees to create and apply adhesive price tags in no time. However, they still needed to change the prices on thousands of stickers by hand if there was a sale or a price change.
In the 1990s the first electronic price signs were installed in retail stores. These digital displays were remotely updatable which saved the tore:ime and eliminated mistakes. The initial models were very simple, only showing prices. Nowadays, ESL can show much more information:
1. Product descriptions and QR codes
2. Inventory levels and locations
3. Customized promotions
At present, approximately a quarter of European retailers have ESLs, and the trend is spreading to the rest of the world. Smart shelf labels like those from Minewtag are giving stores new ways to slash losses and increase profits.
How Smart Shelf Labels Slash Retail Losses
Retail outlets are continually challenged by incorrect product pricing and poor inventory management. These issues may not only cause large sums of money to be lost but also result in customers' dissatisfaction. The electronic shelf labels can be considered one of the ways to relieve those constant headaches.
ESLs utilize digital displays to indicate prices and goods information, automatically updating the data from a central system. With this technology, employees do not have to go out and manually change price tags which saves a lot of time and also reduces mistakes to a minimum.
Benefits of smart shelf labels:
1. Reduced labor costs
2. Improved inventory management
3. Enhanced customer experience
4. Fewer pricing errors
One of the major virtues of ESLs is the power to change prices immediately at every point of sale. In other words, mismatches between shelf tags and check-out prices become a thing of the past;
Though most of the benefits may be well known and associated with accurate pricing; ESLs can also contribute to inventory management by showing stock levels and sending alerts when items are running low. In this way, the store can continue to make sales since customers will not be left without goods to buy because of out-of-stock situations.
1. Centralized control allows for quick, store-wide updates
2. Dynamic pricing capabilities enable easy adjustments for sales or promotions
3. Seamless omnichannel integration keeps online and in-store prices consistent
The Future of Smart Shelf Labels in Retail
Smart shelf labels are rapidly becoming a necessity for progressive retailers. These electronic tags are no longer only selling the benefit of effortless price changes. They are fundamentally transforming how stores work and engage with their clientele.
The feature of changing the prices across the whole store in a click provides retailers with a big upper hand. They are then able to react quickly to the pricing of competitors or make a buck off the rising demand. The wrapping up of such an edge is very important in today's quick retail world.
However the advantages are not limited just to prices. Smart tags are turning into the major crossroads of store operations:
1. Inventory tracking
2. Planogram compliance
3. Customer engagement
4. Staff task management
By working together with other store systems, these tags allow the store employees to see the number of mountains in a stock, the compliance of amusing, and the customer area. This abundance of information to employ helps stores to be facilitated with profits.
Thinking about the future, it's likely that smart tags become more feature-filled than ever before. A tailored screen might present different deals or prices to each customer depending on their membership status or buying habits.
Moreover, electronic price signs are eliminating paper price tags and store ads, thus cutting waste. As retailers are required to be more eco-friendly, this eco-friendly characteristic of smart labels will be a more crucial selling feature for them.
Though the total price of electronic tags may be quite high in the beginning, the advantages over a long period of time clearly outweigh this drawback. Retailers that equip this technology at present would be the first to benefit from the emerging retail trends. A recently published evaluation of electronic and traditional price tags has revealed the significant benefits in efficiency and accuracy.
Minewtag's ESL solutions are claiming the lead of this retail revolution, by offering retailers a powerful tool to attract profits and smooth operations. These smart labels are the result of combining cutting-edge hardware with clever software, and are the key to even more digitalized stores staying competitive.
