Electronic shelf labels for DIY and hardware stores

A DIY store or a big hardware shop puts lines with almost nothing in common under one roof: a loose screw, a drill, a bag of cement, a shrub. That makes electronic shelf labels harder on three fronts: formats, weather, and keeping a huge catalogue in step.

Why DIY is not a supermarket with different stock

In a supermarket most products sit on a front-facing shelf at a predictable height, in packs of similar size. The labels look alike and clip into one continuous rail. In DIY almost none of that holds.

The range is long and mixed. There is no reliable public figure for lines per store: chains tend to quote the total catalogue, which includes online-only items, rather than what is physically on the shop floor. What anyone can see walking round is that three selling logics coexist. The first is branded product with a barcode. The second is small hardware, sold loose or in bags and often hung from a hook. The third is material measured or cut to length: cable, chain, hose, pipe, timber.

That has a practical consequence before any technology comes into it. The cost of keeping prices right on the shelf does not grow with the number of labels but with the number of changes and how hard it is to reach each label. In a warehouse-style store with four or five metres of racking, a manual change is not just slow; it is a ladder job.

The four points where the project is decided

Hooks, bins and pegboard

Small hardware hangs from a pegboard or rod hook, or lives in a bin where it piles up. There is no shelf edge to take the usual rail.

Holder manufacturers have solved much of this with accessories. Renzel, for example, lists peg hook and pegwall adapters compatible with SES-imagotag/Vusion, SoluM, Hanshow, Pricer, Zkong and troniTAG labels, plus hang hooks and tube clips (Renzel). That is good news but not a guarantee: the holder gives you the fixing, and several decisions remain that depend on the store.

• Label size. On a hook carrying four blister packs, a large screen hides the product. Small screens save space but show less: the price and little else.
• Orientation. Product is hung up and taken down; the label has to stay readable without the customer lifting the pack.
• One label per hook or per panel. Labelling every hook is expensive and almost always excessive. A panel of different products needs one label per line; a panel with the same line spread over several hooks can carry one. That decision moves the final count more than the unit price does.
• Bins. Customers rummage and move stock. A label fixed to the bin edge survives better than one hung on the product.

Garden, yard and unheated areas

A garden centre puts the physical problems first. E-paper uses no power to hold an image, but temperature affects both the refresh and the battery.

Catalogue data say little about a yard. Some common models state an operating range of 0 to 40 °C, such as Good-Display’s 2.66-inch label (datasheet). Freezer variants go down to -25 °C, for example SoluM’s Newton Pro Freezer (datasheet), but they are built for the steady cold of a cabinet, not for an outdoor area that swings from January frost to July sun. A coin-cell maker adds that cold raises the cell’s impedance and cuts the voltage margin during a refresh, so updates can be less reliable and the battery can last less than the nominal figure (Longsing). These are supplier figures: treat them as a reason to ask for a datasheet with test results, not as proof.

For an outdoor area the checklist is short but demanding:

1. Operating and storage temperature range, against the real value for the coldest and hottest month where you are.
2. Ingress protection against water and dust for the label plus its holder, not just the screen.
3. Behaviour in direct sun: e-paper reads well in bright light, but a black casing heating up in the sun is another matter.
4. Battery life at the expected temperature and the number of refreshes that area will see, which for plants and seasonal lines changes often.
5. What happens to moisture when watering or rain reaches the shelf.

A sensible way out is to keep labels under cover and leave seasonal outdoor stock to paper tickets: a ruggedised model rarely pays back on a range that turns over every few weeks. That is a legitimate decision, as long as it is taken with numbers.

Finding an item

With thousands of lines, finding a specific one costs more than changing its price. Several manufacturers have built on that. Pricer describes an instant flash function that lights the LED of any label in under a second, useful for locating an item, replenishment and order picking (Pricer). SoluM has a picking and navigation system with seven-colour LEDs and Bluetooth that guides staff along routes (SoluM). Hanshow offers models with NFC and LED which, according to the maker, let a customer pair the label with a phone and look up product information (Hanshow).

Be careful what you promise. These uses are documented mostly in supermarkets, pharmacy and warehouse logistics. There is no public source from a DIY chain saying how much time the flash saves at finding products, or whether it is offered to customers. The clearest in-store use is the colleague restocking or picking a click-and-collect order; the one people talk about most, the customer hunting for a screw, is the least proven.

Public price and trade price

In hardware and building supplies the home customer shares the shop with the tradesperson, the sole trader and the firm buying on account. It is tempting to think the label will show two prices. Normally it will not.

The Price Marking Order 2004 deals with the obligation to indicate the selling price (article 4) and the unit price (article 5), and those provisions concern products offered to consumers (legislation.gov.uk). Trade prices, with volume or account discounts, are applied at the till, at a trade counter or on the order. The shelf shows the public selling price, and that is the figure that must always be right.

One point of interest for lines sold by measure: the unit price is indicated for products sold by weight, volume, length or area, which covers cable, rope, chain and hose, and anything sold by the kilo. The order also sets out in its second schedule a list of products exempt from unit pricing, which removes some small hardware assortments; check the current text for your range rather than relying on a summary.

What the rules say and what they leave open

Three rules cross a DIY shelf, and the price rules guide covers them in detail:

• Visible price and unit price. Applies to paint, adhesives, fertiliser, compost, loose fixings and anything with a declared quantity.
• Previous price. In the EU, Directive (EU) 2019/2161 (Omnibus) requires a reduction announcement to show the lowest price of the previous 30 days (EUR-Lex). The UK sits outside Omnibus and has its own pricing-practice rules, so a UK store should check those separately. With seasonal campaigns like paddling pools, heating or barbecues, price history matters more than in a stable range.
• Match with the till. An electronic label that drifts from the till is as much of a problem as a paper one; the system only makes it less likely if the integration works well.

One public reference: OBI with Vusion

The case with a direct source is OBI. On 26 November 2025 VusionGroup announced that the German DIY, garden and building-supplies chain was rolling out its labels and the VusionCloud platform across more than 200 stores in Germany. OBI operates more than 640 stores in Europe, in Germany and nine other countries. According to the release, the labels run over the Cisco-Meraki wireless network OBI already has, with no extra hardware, and the stated aim is to cut non-selling tasks so staff can attend to customers (VusionGroup).

Read it with care. It is a supplier press release, not an independent report. It gives no number of lines, no savings, no completion dates, and says nothing about NFC or item finding. What it shows is that a large DIY chain has decided to do this at scale; it does not show that the return matched expectations.

What it costs and when it pays

There is no reliable cost table for a DIY store, and those in supplier catalogues are indicative. What does differ from other sectors is the set of variables that drive the sum:

The practical conclusion is that the return is not spread evenly inside one store. A stable section like loose fixings may not justify the investment, while paint, power tools, seasonal heating and garden do move prices often. To estimate with your own figures, use the total cost calculator and look at the payment models in renting versus buying.

How to start

A sensible DIY pilot is not a whole store. It is one awkward aisle, one hook display and one outdoor area, to see how the three kinds of problem behave before you count labels. Project matters such as radio coverage in a shed with metal racking, heights and the installation calendar are covered under implementation.

If you want to see how this looks from the platform and integration side, there is a dedicated page on keonex.com for the DIY sector.

To compare manufacturers, the vendor comparison summarises what each one states; screen technology is explained in LCD versus e-paper.