The end of hand labellers

We all are witnesses of the dramatic technology improvements that happen every day and affect our lives greatly. Some technologies are left behind and become obsolete while others evolve and find a new place in society. After this small preface we want to explore a possible future for hand labellers. In retail stores, there is an extensive use of these small tools to print prices on products. This is an activity that doesn’t provide much value added to the product itself, but it is necessary because customers need to know prices of products.

We need to remember that price varies in each retail store we visit, so this is the kind of information that cannot be previously printed by the manufacturer. Nowadays, this is a task done using hand labellers, but the future might tell a different story. Small devices placed in several intersections of the gondola shelves and in the shopping carts themselves could be used to present information of the product to customers. They are going to obtain the information from central computer systems via wireless protocols. The user will only have to place the barcode of the product on the barcode reader placed on the shopping cart to see the information on a touch screen.

This way the extensive use of hand labellers can be completely eliminated from daily processes of retail stores saving a lot of time and money to these companies. This technology can be complemented with other the one know as radio frequency identification. Together, they could simplify some processes in the retail shops at a point that it won’t be necessary anymore to use hand labellers. Manufacturers of hand labellers should take into account these tendencies in order to be prepared for the new technologies to take the market and replace the old ones.