Next week: Law to cancel the prices labeling on stickers and provide digital displays

Marking the prices on stickers on products, which the marketing chains were required to do about 25 years ago, is one of their most hated obligations. Again and again, the networks tried to cancel the obligation, which they claim imposes heavy costs on them, and does not exist in any country except Israel. Now, it seems that the pressure of the networks is going to bear fruit.
Next week, a memorandum of law (a draft of a government bill) will be published for public comment that will propose to cancel the labeling on the stickers, provided that the price appears on the shelf, next to the products. The change in the law is intended to allow the publication of prices on digital displays, and not on stickers - which will allow the chains, according to them, to save about 30% of the manpower of the bouncers in the branches.
The Ministry of Economy, which has tried to promote the change in the legislation in recent years, hopes that the change in the law will come into effect within a few months, and is promoting an outline that will help small supermarkets adopt the digital price displays.
Meanwhile, the big retailers are not waiting for the law to change. Some of them have already started a pilot to install digital signage in their branches, which connects in real time to the cash registers and displays the prices. Among the marketing chains that have already started investing in the pilot are Shufersal, Rami Levy and Yohannoff, as well as smaller chains such as Salah Dabah and King Store.
The cost of installing the systems in each branch varies according to its size and the chosen technology. The expected cost is a one-time payment of between hundreds of thousands of shekels and more than one million shekels per branch. The savings from the digital displays will come mainly from the possibility of significantly reducing the number of ushers employed, and is estimated at several hundred thousand shekels each year.
The Ras company, which develops the interface, started installing these technologies several years ago. Until today, the digital displays were mainly relevant in the fruit, vegetable and meat departments - where there is no legal obligation to affix stickers.
"The displays make it possible to change the prices in the entire store within 30 seconds," explains an executive of the developing company. Therefore, to protect the consumer, it will be possible to increase the price only at night
"We have already installed monitors in 1,000 stores in Israel," says Aviv Sharpstein from Ras. "At Rami Levy, for example, we installed them in the fresh departments in 80 branches. Even things that came up in the requirements of the Consumer Protection Authority are already in our development, such as a terminal where it will be possible to compare prices."
Sharpstein is sure that this is a revolution. "This technology makes it possible to change the prices in the entire store in 30 seconds. This way the retailer can go on sale for a limited time very quickly. Our whole concept of price changes is about to change."
The retailers rely on the understanding that one way or another, the reform - which has been in preparation for a long time - will come into effect in the near future. They are ready to take the gamble and install the monitors right now, in order to be ahead of the market