Paxar's Solution enhances Waitrose's markdown labelling

One of Britain’s leading food retailers, Waitrose, has adopted a novel solution for checkout scanning prices that are marked-down in-store. The brainchild of Harlow-based Paxar UK, the solution utilises specially designed “piggy-back” reduced-item labels and the company’s handheld Pathfinder® Ultra combined scanner, data collector, and printer and label applicator and is now used throughout Waitrose’s “quick-check” self-scanning stores.

Waitrose’s brief to Paxar was to devise a more cost-effective, time-efficient and secure method for re-labelling selected stock. The conventional way of re-pricing is to apply a “reduced” label, superimposed over the original label to ensure that the old price is not inadvertently scanned at the checkout. However, not all EpoS scanners can scan the new barcode, seemingly leaving just two options; the expensive route of replacing the scanners, or the labour intensive route of having the checkout operator carefully remove the “now” label, scan the original – and hopefully undamaged - barcode and enter the new price.

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Paxar’s solution is to use a two-layer or “piggy-back” label. The way in which this works is that by incorporating a specially developed adhesive and a dry strip along the side of the label, the top “now” label can be easily removed by the checkout operator. This reveals a clear acetate label beneath, through which the original barcode can be scanned.

In addition to being a much neater and more efficient solution, this is also a major step forward in terms of security. When deciding on the adhesive for the new “piggy-back” labels, Paxar’s design team selected one that, once the top “now” part of the label had been removed, it would not stick to other items. In fact, once removed, the label cannot even be re-stuck to the original barcode label. This means that it is impossible to fraudulently peel off a reduced price “now” label and apply it to a more expensive item.

The solution has proved so successful that Waitrose has so far taken delivery of 200 of Paxar's Monarch® Pathfinder® Ultra's. Heather Tull, Waitrose’s Purchasing Manager responsible for negotiating the deal with Paxar comments: “Presentation is very important to Waitrose and the new Paxar labels are an extremely neat solution. Our checkout staff find the solution easy to operate and the in-built security of the label not being able to be re-applied is a real cost-saving bonus.”