FLEMING TO EXPAND ITS ESLS TO TWO MORE STORES

DEENA AMATO-McCOY

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Fleming Cos. here is expanding its use of electronic shelf labels in the retail stores it operates. The company will install ESLs in two stores in Pennsylvania and Kentucky beginning this month.

Fleming, a wholesaler that also operates 310 stores, already uses the electronic tags in six stores, according to Scott Yeager, marketing director of retail technology services for Fleming.

"The two [new] stores will be installed with the radio frequency units between May and June," he told SN.

Fleming executives declined to comment further on their use of ESLs.

ESLs, plastic tags that display product prices via a liquid crystal display, are placed on the edge of store shelves to show a product's price. Some tags employ RF technology to update the price shown on each tag, drawing data from the same computer file used to update a store's point-of-sale system.

Fleming is installing electronic shelf labels from Telepanel Systems, Markham, Ontario.

Retailers who have used ESLs cite greater price integrity, as well as the opportunity for labor savings by not having to manually update traditional paper tags.

While high initial purchase costs for the electronic labels have been a key factor slowing their adoption by the industry, innovative pricing strategies have spurred recent growth. For example, a leasing arrangement that charged retailers based partly on the number of price changes they made with the ESLs was introduced in early 1997.