The Coolest Thing Revisited

This past weekend you would have found me once again scurrying around town doing still more Christmas shopping, finally with the end of my list clearly in sight. And 'scurrying' may be a bit too energetic to describe the sometimes painful process of getting through the agonizingly-slow-moving columns of traffic both outside as well as inside the stores. It was clearly obvious I was not alone in my task judging from the volume of shoppers out and about. I was thrilled to locate most of the gifts on my various lists, and of course some that were not. But as usual there remained several more challenging items left to still be procured.

Troughout the day I turned many times to my iPhone texting questions about a particular gift, or to search Google for something, to browse for comparable products, check prices, availability, shipping charges - at one point I even sat in the parking lot to order an item for home delivery after discovering the store did not have it in stock.

That evening back home, having unloaded the car and inventorying the day's booty, I finally kicked back in front of the fireplace, a glass of crisp chardonnay in hand, holiday music gently playing in the background. On the table next to me my iPhone began providing status updates for my online purchase - first the order confirmation, then the credit card receipt, then fulfillment, and ultimately the shipping confirmation with tracking number. All in the course of no more than thre to four hours time. I smiled.

While none of this is necessarily new, it is continuing evidence nevertheless of how technology is revolutionizing consumer shopping habits. Basking in the satisfaction of my day's accomplishments I reminisced about gift-shopping experiences of Christmases past, before the personal computer, the Internet, and the iPhone. It was a far more exhausting time and energy-consuming process, searching store shelves, driving from store to store, sometimes town-to-town, searching for a special item that just simply had to be under the tree.

Many people still enjoy the thrill of the hunt, the frenzy of the SHOP-PING experience and that's absolutely fine. But for me, I love my techno-tools and how they have simplified my gift-giving experience. Vendors are successfully delivering the sights and sounds of Christmas over the network. Now we just need to figure out how to deliver the smells of Christmas over the same network as well. Talk about integration!

The Coolest Thing

Yesterday my daughter and I were doing some Christmas shopping when I was intrigued by an application of digital signage at one of the stores we visited - ok, it was Kohls. Posted everywhere - in the aisles, on the shelves, directly on merchandise - were 7" LCD display panels with the sale and price information for the particular item(s). There were literally hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. Each one was battery powered, easy to read, designed to be hung virtually anywhere - with nary a connection. So, being the tech-inquisitive person I am I covertly slipped one off its palstic hanger to see what the heck it was, a brand, model number, any identification I could find. Probably drove the store security people watching camera monitors nuts!

The sign had nothing to distinguish it from any ordinary, everyday black and white LCD picture display, about 3/8' thick, battery access door, that was it. And the name "Altierre Corp., San Jose, CA.". I was so intrigued by this little device I found it difficult to pay attention to the real purpose of our trip - Christmas gift shopping! Was it Wi-Fi enabled I wondered? Did it get automatic price updates from a central database somewhere, distributed wirelessly throughout the store? Then I noticed the complete absence of traditional printed product and promotional placards. They had been replaced by the digital displays. What a great time-saving, perfectly feasible application of digital display technology I decided. And what made it feasible was its ease of deployment - small lightweight package, battery powered, and wireless.

Back home I Googled Altierre Corp. and found their website but not much in the way of product information. The image above came from the home page as does the following Press Release:


ALTIERRE ANNOUNCES NFC-ENABLED PRICE TAGS AND DIGITAL SIGNS
Smart Phone Interactivity Complements Suite of Consumer-Facing Offerings for Retailers

San Jose, Calif., September 13, 2012 — Altierre Corp., a provider of ultra low-power wireless technology that enables dynamic pricing, promotion, and product information in brick and mortar retail stores, today announced the introduction of near field communication (NFC)-enabled price tags and digital signs, augmenting the company’s complete suite of wireless solutions for retailers. NFC is a standards-based connectivity technology that enables interactivity with smart phones, facilitating communication and mobile payments. Altierre’s NFC- embedded technology opens the way for shoppers to scan electronic price tags and digital signs using their smart phones, making it possible for retailers to provide in-store personalized offers and product details such as nutritional and allergy information. In addition it allows retailers to cross-sell or upsell associated items, while also enabling instant checkout via applications like Google Wallet. “Convergence technologies like NFC are the wave of the future for bricks and mortar retailers seeking the holy grail of one-to-one personalized engagement with customers,” said Sunit Saxena, Chairman and CEO of Altierre. “We are continually striving to offer retailers new opportunities to harness technology to increase their store efficiencies and revenues, and to delight their customers while strengthening loyalty.” The introduction of NFC capability adds a new dimension to, and complements, the broad suite of infrastructure, sensor network, and consumer-facing display technology offerings from Altierre that includes E-Paper and animation capable tags. Altierre’s bi-directional ultra-low power wireless technology is already operating in over 1,000 retail stores across US and Europe. The system has been enterprise-hardened in terms of ease of deployment, ease of ongoing maintenance, least infrastructure cost, 24/7 system dependability, and synchronization to point of sales cash registers, all adding up to the highest functionality, lowest-cost system in the market place today.


Technology that makes sense gets me all excited. This makes incredible sense. It uses the same 'e-ink' techology as the popular book readers so battery life is incredible. And considering the implications of being integrated into marketing and PoS solutions this makes the printed signs and posters things of the past. Undoubtedly we'll soon be seeing these things - and others like them - everywhere. To read more, go to Altierre's web site www.altierre.com