4 Strategies to Increase Hardware Store Sales

The hardware industry today is much more complex than it once was. It’s no longer safe to assume that simply offering quality, service and value will be enough to bring the local community in to shop. With big box stores and internet giants competing for customers’ attention and dollars, hardware stores have to work hard to stand out and present themselves as the best option.

Here are 4 strategies hardware stores can use to increase sales and hold their own against the competition.

Offer exceptional, well-informed customer service

One of the best ways for hardware stores to convince customers to shop with them rather than at big box stores or on the internet is to offer something the competition can’t—helpful, attentive customer service.

Many of the people who go to hardware stores may not have a lot of experience with the equipment on offer or the project they’re trying to accomplish. Having access to a knowledgeable, well-intentioned employee who can guide them through the process of acquiring what they need can be extremely helpful and very much appreciated.

Hire individuals who know how to provide great service and train them on all of your products to boost sales and create goodwill.

Online and in-store hardware marketing strategies

In the current competitive market, it’s vital to employ a variety of hardware marketing strategies to make customers aware of your store and entice them to buy.

Even small hardware stores can use online marketing to their advantage by having an online store, a website that is optimized for SEO and a social media presence. Content like a DIY YouTube channel can help you reach your target audience and create a positive association with your brand.

You can also capitalize on in-store marketing ideas to boost sales. Consider offering free samples or holding demonstrations to show customers the benefits of your products. Vibrant digital signage can also be used to grab customers’ attention and enhance their shopping experience.

Entice customers with loyalty programs and discounts

Customers are always looking for ways to save, particularly now with the inflation of retail prices. Offering discounts on certain items for a limited time only encourages customers to buy now to take advantage of the savings. Limited-time deals help increase sales and attract new customers. You can even create a loyalty program and offer discounts for members only to encourage repeat business.

Electronic shelf labels (ESLs), also known as digital price tags, are an incredibly useful tool when it comes to this type of hardware store sales strategy. With them, prices can be updated in mere moments as often as needed, and they can display several different colors to make promotions

Make shopping at your hardware store as convenient as possible

Making shopping as convenient as possible and giving customers multiple ways to shop is an important strategy for boosting sales. Having an online store with delivery and click and collect options will encourage customers to purchase from you when they might otherwise have gone elsewhere.

Equipping your hardware store with digital price tags can streamline the click and collect process by guiding your employees to the required items, significantly reducing the amount of time it takes to fulfill orders. The geolocation system can also be offered to customers via interactive kiosks or a QR code to streamline the shopping experience.

Boost your hardware store sales with JRTech Solutions!

JRTech Solutions offers digital pricing solutions and signage for retailers that are looking to modernize their stores. In addition to facilitating promotions, marketing and geolocation, our technology can expedite restocking, automate processes to reduce labor requirements and significantly lower the rate of errors, improving the shopping experience.

Contact us today to give your hardware store sales strategy a digital boost!

5 Inflation Pricing Strategies for Retail | JRTech Solutions

As a retailer, dealing with inflation is a balancing act – raising prices too much could result in the loss of important customers, but not increasing them could negatively affect your bottom line.

In this article, we provide you with the best inflation pricing strategies to ensure your business finds the perfect balance between cost and profitability. With our expert advice, you will have the tools that your business needs to remain competitive and profitable in the ever-changing economic climate.

Inflation trends in 2022 and beyond

Inflation made a huge resurgence in 2022, causing Canadian shoppers to experience prices they hadn’t seen in decades. As 2023 approaches and the global economy continues to recover from the economic impact of the pandemic, consumers are feeling the burden of having their budgets stretched thin and understandably worried about what the future may hold.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is the Bank of Canada’s preferred indicator of Canadian inflation. The CPI is a measure of how the cost of goods and services change over time. CPI data released in October 2022 by Statistics Canada showed a 6.9% rise in prices over the previous 12 months. Earlier in the year, the CPI had risen to 8.1%, the largest yearly change since January 1983.

Businesses, just like consumers, are feeling the pressure of inflation. According to a report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, nearly 8 out of 10 small business owners reported increasing their prices more than they would have in a typical year. Retail sales decreased by 2.5% in July 2022, exceeding the predicted 2% decrease.

Despite some claiming that inflation has reached its peak, the outlook for the future calls for caution. The consensus is that the economy is likely to slow down in 2023 and even into 2024. This highlights the importance of having an effective inflation pricing strategy to offset this potential economic downtrend.

The 5 best retail pricing strategies during high inflation

Here are some effective strategies to consider during periods of inflation.

Revaluate your budget to absorb costs

There are ways to keep your profit margin intact without simply passing price increases along to the customer. Absorbing costs and adjusting your budget as a consequence may be an option to help battle inflation, rather than solely relying on price increases.

Revisit your budget and identify areas where costs can be reduced temporarily to avoid increasing prices too high, which will help counter the decrease in consumer buying power.

Consider consumer demand and price elasticity

Gaining insight into your company’s position within the market is key. Factors such as consumer demand can have a large impact on pricing strategies. 

If your goods or services are in high demand, it is more likely that increasing prices will be successful. In these cases, products have a strong price elasticity, which allows prices to be raised without impacting sales. However, this is not always true.

Your pricing strategy should also take seasonal demand into consideration. During times of year when consumers are financially constrained, raising prices may lead to more consumer resistance.

Adopt digital technologies for long-term resiliency

n the other side of the coin, you may want to consider investing in technology to become more resilient to inflation in the long run. In the short-term, it may therefore be necessary to rely on price increases for this strategy.

As pointed out in a May 2022 Forbes article, retailers are leveraging technology to better reach and engage customers in novel ways during inflation. The logic here is partly due to the realities of deflationary technology, the idea that the cost of technology decreases in proportion to its usage.

One such technology that retailers are adopting is smart shelving. Smart shelves feature electronic shelf label technology, which provides consumers with real-time access to price comparisons and available promotions, which are advantageous in times of inflation.

Monitor your competitors’ pricing

Competitive pricing helps ensure that you always offer the best value for your customers. Monitoring your competitors’ pricing strategies will help inform your own decision-making process. 

Knowing when competitors are likely to increase or lower their prices can be beneficial when setting your own prices. When inflation is high and competitors are changing their prices, you should be keeping an eye on their pricing strategies and making informed adjustments.

Implement a dynamic pricing model

A dynamic pricing model can be a great choice for companies during times of inflation. This model can help businesses maintain their profitability by automatically adjusting prices according to changes in different factors, such as supply chain costs and, as outlined above, market demand and competition.

Tips for making price adjustments during inflation

Here are some tips to simplify making price changes during times of inflation:

  • Monitor the inflation rate: Review the inflation rate regularly and make sure you are aware of any changes that may affect the cost of goods and services.
  • Set pricing thresholds: Define thresholds for when prices should be adjusted to counteract the effects of inflation.
  • Consider the impact of price changes: Consider the potential impact of price changes on current and potential customers.
  • Communicate pricing changes: Let customers know about any pricing changes and explain why the changes are necessary.
  • Use discounts or promotions: Offer discounts or promotions to offset the effects of inflation on prices. Share promotions with customers on social media and in-store using digital signage or point-of-purchase displays.

JRTech Solutions can help you become resilient during inflation

Retailers can face tough challenges when inflation rates are high, due to increased production costs and reduced consumer spending. For continued profitability, it’s always a good idea to revaluate and optimize your pricing strategies.

JRTech’s electronic shelf labels (ESLs) provide an optimal solution for retailers to become more resilient in the face of inflation. Automating pricing with ESLs not only eliminates the need for manual price changes, but also provides valuable product data to your employees and consumers.

Contact us now to learn more about our products and start optimizing your pricing strategy today.

Digital Price Tags for Home Improvement and Hardware Stores: 5 Benefits

Home improvement and hardware stores often have vast sales areas and thousands or tens of thousands of products to manage. In such large retail environments, manually updating each shelf label every time a price changes is a massive undertaking that wastes valuable man hours and leads to significant pricing errors.

Fortunately, new technology is available to streamline the price changing process, optimize inventory management and much more! Discover the many benefits of digital price tags for hardware stores in this article.

 1. Central control and efficiency

With digital price tags, also known as electronic shelf labels, prices are updated automatically and simultaneously from a central hub. This completely eliminates the need for hardware store staff to go from shelf to shelf changing price tags. Particularly considering the current labour shortage, eliminating such a time-consuming task is a major advantage.

2. Price accuracy and error reduction

Stores that use paper labels tend to have an error rate of 5 to 10% at any given time. Conversely, the centralization and automation of price updates with digital price tags leaves very little room for human error. Prices are accurate and consistent both on the electronic labels and at the cash, improving customer satisfaction and reducing the need for price checks and compensation.

3. Improved customer experience

With online retailers encroaching on brick-and-mortar home improvement and hardware stores, it has never been more important to provide customers with a positive in-store experience. In addition to better price accuracy, digital price tags can improve the customer experience by providing additional information about products and making it easier to identify sales.

4. Optimized promotions

The flexibility that comes with digital price tags allows retailers to take advantage of dynamic pricing—the ability to adjust prices at will to account for performance, stock levels and competitors’ promotions. Furthermore, the electronic labels can display four different colours that can be used to draw attention to items that are on sale.

 5. Hardware store inventory management

Electronic shelf labels can also help home improvement and hardware stores with inventory management. The labels can display the number of items in stock and are equipped with geolocation capabilities and flashing lights, enabling employees to quickly identify shelves that need to be restocked.

Modernize your hardware store with digital price tags!

Digital price tags are an excellent way for hardware stores to improve efficiency, price accuracy and customer satisfaction. With so many benefits for retailers, they are sure to be a worthwhile investment!

JRTech Solutions is the leading provider of digital pricing solutions in North America. We supply first-rate electronic shelf labels and digital signage from industry pioneer Pricer. Contact us today to bring your hardware store shelves into the digital age!

Digital Price Tags for Grocery Stores: 4 Benefits for Supermarkets

The wave of digital transformation in retail and grocery stores has only accelerated over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. As customer expectations and purchasing behaviours evolve, supermarkets must keep pace in order to stay competitive. This involves bringing new technology to store shelves, updating outdated and inefficient practices with innovative digital solutions like digital price tags.-

Electronic price tags can do so much more than just display prices—they can provide incredible benefits for the grocery stores that implement them. Find out more!

Better efficiency and reduced labour costs

Supermarkets often need to change thousands of price tags per week. When this is done manually, the labour costs add up fast. With digital price tags, also known as electronic shelf labels, prices can be changed across the store in minutes. This drastically improves efficiency and frees up employees for other pursuits.

Since the advent of the pandemic, ordering groceries online has become much more popular. Supermarkets are now having to hire flocks of pickers to fulfill delivery and click and collect orders. A single order can take up to 30 minutes for a picker to prepare. Digital price tag technology includes geolocation to guide pickers on an optimized route through the store and help them easily find the aisles they’re looking for. Once there, the price tags will flash to indicate the exact location of the desired product, saving up to 10 seconds per pick.

Accurate pricing for improved customer satisfaction

Manually updating grocery store price tags is a long, arduous and detailed process that results in frequent pricing errors—up to 10% of labels may be missing, misplaced or incorrect at any given time.

This can cause significant dissatisfaction among customers and slowdowns at grocery store checkouts. If a customer gets to the cash and a product they believed was $3.50 is scanned at $3.99, they will be upset at being expected to pay more. The cashier will need to call for an employee to do a price check, and the six customers standing in line will be frustrated at the slowdown in service.

This kind of undesirable situation can be avoided with electronic shelf labels’ automated price updates.

Phygitalization: the harmonization of the physical and digital worlds

In a context where technology and digitization are becoming ever more important, phygitalization is a concept that seeks to bring the benefits of digital innovation to the physical environments of brick and mortar stores. Technology such as electronic price tags and digital signage in grocery stores and retail outlets can provide customers with access to more information and an experience that equals or surpasses that of shopping online.

Dynamic pricing for waste reduction

With digital price tags, supermarkets can make the most of dynamic pricing, adjusting prices as necessary to account for changes in supply and demand. This strategy can also be used to reduce waste in grocery stores. Wasteless is a dynamic pricing algorithm that can be integrated with digital price tags to display different prices for perishable foods based on their expiration dates. This incentivizes customers to purchase products that are nearing their sell-by dates, minimizing food waste and maximizing revenue.

Optimize your grocery store pricing with JRTech Solutions

JRTech Solutions is North America’s leading supplier of digital pricing systems from industry pioneer Pricer. Our electronic shelf labels and digital signage for grocery stores are designed to provide supermarkets with every advantage modern technology has to offer. If you’d like to increase efficiency, improve price accuracy and customer satisfaction, and reduce waste, contact us to optimize your pricing processes today!

Smart Shelves: What is Smart Shelving?

Like most industries today, the retail sector is grappling with the rise of the digital era, which has brought profound changes to business operations and customer expectations. While it may seem daunting, retailers must dive into the process of digital transformation in order to remain competitive. Fortunately, with new technology come innovative solutions that can truly revolutionize every aspect of business and are well worth the effort put into the transition!

In this article, discover the concept of smart shelving and find out how these digital solutions can help retailers!

What are smart shelves?

Broadly speaking, smart shelving is the implementation of new technology in retail to optimize the shopping experience. There are a variety of devices that can be installed on and around shelves to keep track of inventory, manage prices, collect data and provide insights into customer preferences and shopping patterns.

Types of smart shelf technology and how they work

Shelf sensors

There are a few different types of sensors that can be used on store shelves. Weight sensors can track inventory as products are removed and detect when items are out of stock. This makes it much easier to manage inventory and determine when restocking is needed, improving customer satisfaction by avoiding situations where items are unexpectedly sold out. 

Bluetooth and NFC (near-field communication) can be used to detect shopper proximity and the amount of time they spend in front of the shelf, collecting valuable data about their habits and preferences. Furthermore, if desired, this technology can interact with an app on customers’ phones, showing them personalized promotions based on their previous purchases.

Shelf cameras

Shelf cameras have a variety of applications in retail. Cameras can be installed on opposite shelves to monitor the products in real-time, detecting any gaps and notifying staff accordingly. They can even verify planogram compliance, making sure that every product is in its proper place on the shelves. 

Our AI-enabled technology tool, Pricer’s Shelf Vision, is specifically designed and tailored for retail businesses. The Shelf Vision, which on the surface looks like an electronic shelf label (ESL), is actually composed of a sophisticated wide-angle camera that uses a wireless optical system and IoT capabilities.

Meanwhile, front-facing cameras on smart shelves can assess shoppers’ gender and age ranges, facial expressions and moods, providing retailers and manufacturers with important data about customer demographics and how they respond to products, advertising, etc.

Digital signage

Digital signage is the smart alternative to paper posters. Much easier to change and update than their traditional counterparts, digital signs can be used to showcase high-profit-margin products and limited-time deals. They can feature ads, product demonstrations and video testimonials, and even offer interactive options for customers!

Smart signs immediately grab customers’ attention and influence their behaviour and decision-making, all while providing them with a more enjoyable shopping experience.

Electronic shelf labels

Electronic shelf labels (ESLs) are smart replacements for the paper labels that traditionally display the prices of products. They are all connected to a central system and can be updated automatically, removing the need for manual price changes.

Many electronic shelf labels on the market are equipped with flashing lights, but only Pricer digital price tags from JRTech Solutions can guide staff to the correct location when restocking products or picking for click and collect orders. These features can significantly reduce the need for staff and the associated costs at a time when labour is at a premium.

Benefit from smart shelf technology with JRTech Solutions

JRTech is the leading supplier of electronic shelf labels and smart shelving solutions in North America. We are proud to provide retailers with proven technology from industry pioneer Pricer to help them digitalize and meet the needs of the modern world of phygitalization! Contact us today.