A big curiosity and desire to explore new and different ways to run supermarkets is, among other things, something that makes Kvickly Ry a first mover in the retail industry. In 2006, Kvickly Ry was the first supermarket in Denmark to implement electronic shelf labels. It all started as a school project, originated from a persevering and curious student, who with his final exam got the ESL project realized, when the money for testing and later full implementation, was granted by the board in the consumer cooperative TRYG.
As an independent consumer cooperative, part of the Danish Coop-family, independence is one of the primary drivers at Kvickly Ry. Both store staff and management take the initiative for a lot new and exciting projects. The projects all have the aim to optimize the store and create a better shopping experience for the customers. Electronic shelf labels have been one of the projects, another one is the e-supermarket OSUMA.dk, which is owned by Kvickly Ry and can cover grocery delivery to 4.5 million Danes. The next big project is already in progress and consists of a mayor rebuilding with drive-in pickup, more square meters for the store, butcher and bakery and a 1st floor for the project ‘Kvickly's cooking school’ and other exciting activities.
"The biggest argument for electronic shelf labels is to avoid price errors. However, image is also an important factor – we are the local area's consumer cooperative with our customers as our owners. It is therefore crucial to ensure correct prices." (Torben Andreassen, CEO, Kvickly Ry)
More time for customers
At Kvickly Ry, the business case on electronic price tags has never been about cut downs in the store staff. From the very beginning, the focus has been to make sure that all the products have prices on the shelf edge – and the correct prices. It has therefore been possible to relocate employees' time from the early hours with manual and time-consuming work related to campaign changes, until later in the day - where the customers actually go shopping, now that prices and promotions are updated automatically throughout the store.
- The biggest argument for electronic shelf labels is to avoid price errors. However, image is also an important factor – we are the local area's consumer cooperative with our customers as our owners. It is therefore crucial to ensure correct prices. It has never been about cutting down the number of employees. Instead, we have moved the employees from the morning to later in the day where the customer flow is biggest, so we are ready to meet our customers with advice and guidance, says Torben Andreassen, CEO at Kvickly Ry.
More dynamics and great flexibility
The benefits of electronic pricing are also noticed by the staff in the daily use. One of the areas that has made the greatest impact for both employees and management, is the dynamics and the ability to convert ideas to action without having to change paper signs throughout the store.
- When we have the opportunity to run a supplier promotion and give customers some unique offers, we don’t have to think about whether it is too difficult and requires too much time to plan price changes on the shelves. Instead, we simply enter the promotion and then the prices are automatically being updated throughout the store. It is much more dynamic and gives us a great flexibility to make new actions. It would have taken many hours to do this with paper signs, tells Jane Holtens, Deputy Head at Kvickly Ry.
Electronic Shelf Labels at Coop
The consumer cooperative TRYG is an independent association under Coop Denmark, with 4.500 members / owners, running the stores Kvickly Ry and SuperBrugsen in Ry and Kolt in Aarhus. Delfi Technologies provides the electronic shelf labels for Kvickly Ry, which is one of the stores with electronic shelf labels in Coop Denmark. Today, almost 400 Coop stores use electronic shelf labels from Delfi Technologies.
