DESIGN-R-LABELS for INDEPENDENTS
Sign and Label Printing Solutions
for Independent Retailers
DESIGN-R-LABELS for INDEPENDENTS
Sign and Label Printing Solutions
for Independent Retailers
The best way to communicate with customers is with professional in-store signage.
Wouldn’t it be great if you had enough profit margin, so that you could afford to greet and escort every customer that walked through your door? You could guide them throughout their shopping experience pointing out things like new items, product health advantages, price comparisons, and so on. Unfortunately, the margin for the vast majority of retailers does not support this method of operation. So, the next best way to communicate these messages to the customer is with in-store signage. Timely, professional signage enables the store to educate and influence the buying habits of the consumer.
Move past basic function and limited capabilities.
Of course, how to get timely, accurate, and professional looking signage in the store is the need. Many of today’s Point-Of-Sale systems come with a generic sign or label printing application, most with very limited functionality. The successful independent retailer needs to move past this basic functionality and on to a professional system designed exclusively for retailers.
Moving on to success!
Move on to a program that can support the advanced functions and capabilities needed to communicate your message in a clear and professional manner. Functionality, such as the advanced design module, enable retailers to create unique, artfully designed signs and bar-coded labels, so that you can communicate better with the customer. You actually use your own product data while designing. Not fake item information, or even worse field names. Many other features allow you to print professional signs and labels more quickly, which helps to drive down costs.
The best way to communicate with customers is with professional in-store signage.
Wouldn’t it be great if you had enough profit margin, so that you could afford to greet and escort every customer that walked through your door? You could guide them throughout their shopping experience pointing out things like new items, product health advantages, price comparisons, and so on. Unfortunately, the margin for the vast majority of retailers does not support this method of operation. So, the next best way to communicate these messages to the customer is with in-store signage. Timely, professional signage enables the store to educate and influence the buying habits of the consumer.
Move past basic function and limited capabilities.
Of course, how to get timely, accurate, and professional looking signage in the store is the need. Many of today’s Point-Of-Sale systems come with a generic sign or label printing application, most with very limited functionality. The successful independent retailer needs to move past this basic functionality and on to a professional system designed exclusively for retailers.
Moving on to success!
Move on to a program that can support the advanced functions and capabilities needed to communicate your message in a clear and professional manner. Functionality, such as the advanced design module, enable retailers to create unique, artfully designed signs and bar-coded labels, so that you can communicate better with the customer. You actually use your own product data while designing. Not fake item information, or even worse field names. Many other features allow you to print professional signs and labels more quickly, which helps to drive down costs.
INDEPENDENT SOLUTIONS
Create Professional In-Store Signs & Labels, Just like the Big Corporate Stores!
DESIGN-R-LABELS for Independents is the in-store sign and label making software of choice for small businesses, independent retailers, and IGA stores around the globe. Allowing them to create and print professional in-store signage and labels with accuracy and ease, just like the big corporations. This software also enables the independent grocer to have complete control of how, what, when, and how many signs, labels, and shelf talkers they want to print.
Independent Solution Overview:
In today’s highly competitive environment differentiating oneself from the competition is more important than ever before. Just as important as creating that difference is communicating that specialty to the customer.
It would be great if there were enough profit margin in the store that you could afford to greet each customer and personally escort them throughout their shopping journey. You could point out things like new products, health advantages of products, price comparisons, and so on. However, the margin for the majority of retailers does not support this method. The best way to communicate messages to the customer is with in-store signage. Professional signage enables the store to educate and influence the buying habits of the consumer.
Of course, how to get timely, correct, and professional looking signage in the store is the need. Many of today’s Point-Of-Sale systems come with a generic sign or label printing application, most with very limited functionality. The successful retailer needs to move past this basic functionality and on to a professional system. A system designed exclusively for retailers that can support the advanced functions needed for retailers to communicate their message in a clear, cost-effective way.
Industry leading functionality:
DESIGN-R-LABELS for Independents is an easy-to-use sign and label printing system. It enables the retailer to quickly and easily present the desired message to his customers with professional, image enhancing signs. The software comes in different models, modules, and architecture to fit the need of any size store from one checkout to one hundred.
Industry leading functionality, such as the most advanced design module, enables the retailer to create unique, artfully designed signs and bar-coded labels to better communicate with the customer. You actually use your product data while designing, not fake item information or even worse field names. Many other features in the system allow you to print signs and labels more quickly, professionally, and cost-effectively.
New Features of DESIGN-R-LABELS Version 4
Create Professional In-Store Signs & Labels, Just like the Big Corporate Stores!
- Built-in interfaces to many POS and Back-Office Applications
- Easy mapping of many types of data files including:
- Excel
- ASCII flat files including fixed length and delimited
- CSV
- ODBC
- Scripted
- Reading of data files can be executed by the following
- Automated call by a third-party POS or Back-Office application
- Microsoft Scheduler
- DESIGN-R-LABELS menu option
- DESIGN-R-LABELS takes advantage of SQLite for reading, storing (temporarily or permanently depending on management settings), and sorting of your product data for printing.
- DESIGN-R-LABELS supports many field types including the following:
- Character
- Numeric
- Date including Start and End Dates
- Price
- Split
- Product Size
- Compare item
- And more
- DESIGN-R-LABELS supports many field types including the following:
Control and Management (Management Control)
- DESIGN-R-LABELS supports multi-level management control over the features, functions, and operation of the software. The Authorization control includes the following:
- Screen layout and color scheme
- Fields – character size of the field, field type display size, and layout order
- Filters
- Static Sorts
- Dynamic Sorts
- Forms and Templates
- Groups and Users
- Printers
- Form-to-Printer & Tray Assignment
- Global Settings
- Error Handling
Eliminating Errors (Error Handling)
The Error Handling functionality of DESIGN-R-LABELS will save you many hours of support issues and increase user satisfaction. The Error Handling will check for common errors and correct or handle them on the fly. It prevents errors from printing bad labels and eliminates missing labels or missing data.
Error Handling enables you to create rules that keep the program from crashing or failing to print the correct signs or labels. You specify what happens if something is not right; does the program close, notify the user of the issue, print with the missing or inconsistent data, etc., your choice.
Printing
- Print with as little as a “single click”
- DESIGN-R-LABELS can walk you through printing multiple stocks from a single tray
- Print to any printer that supports a “Windows” print driver
- Print to laser, thermal roll or plotter printers
- Print to as many printers as needed – no limit
- DESIGN-R-LABELS can store the unique printer settings by media type and send it to the printer by job
Data Expansion (Data Change Table)
DESIGN-R-LABELS can improve the appearance and readability of your signs and labels by converting codes that are typically found in POS and Back-Office systems into words or phrases that customers easily understand. See the following examples:
- A code “0 or 1” to represent WIC eligible or not; 0 = Not Eligible, 1 = WIC eligible in your data file to “WIC” or nothing in the field if not eligible.
- California Bottle Deposit (Plus California Redemption Value, +CRV) typically stores as 1 or 0 or Y or N in the POS or Back-Office file. DESIGN-R-LABELS reads it and puts +CRV in the DRL print file.
- DESIGN-R-LABELS can also expand your product descriptions. Complete words will dramatically (at least 35% or more*) improve the readability of your signs and lead to increased sales and profits for your store. Examples of description expansions follow:
POS DESCRIPTION DESIGN-R-LABELS
- RD WSP HRNT SPY
- 3M SB HVY DTY SPNG
- COMM BRKFST SNG BLND
- JMX STR BRY NTR
- BST-CH RB RD GRF DK
- CAMP CKN NDL SP SOUP
- PFC CK TERYK BWL
EXPANDED DESCRIPTION
- RAID WASP HORNET SPRAY
- 3M SCOTCH-BRITE HEAVY-DUTY SPONGE
- COMMUNITY BREAKFAST SIGNATURE BLEND
- JUMEX STRAWBERRY BANANA NECTAR DRINK
- BEST CHOICE RUBY RED GRAPEFRUIT DRINK
- CAMPBELL’S CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP
- P.F. CHANG’S CHICKEN TERIYAKI BOWL
*per JAMA study of abbreviations vs. spelling out words
Intelligent, If/Then Operations (Relation Editor)
- The Relations editor enables you to insert intelligent, if/then, rules into your templates with ZERO coding! This functionality will dramatically reduce the number of templates that you have to create and more importantly, support in the months and years ahead.
- The Relation Editor in DESIGN-R-LABELS enables you to create “if/then” statements in your templates without any coding.
- Create as many Relations as needed per template.
- Relations dramatically reduce the number of templates that you need to create. Most customers see a reduction of 75% in the number of templates needed compared to their previous label-printing system.
- The reduction in the number of templates that must be maintained greatly reduces your support time and cost.
- Relations enable you to print different-looking templates (although they are the same template) on the same page.
- This reduces the number of wasted labels and talkers on a page at the end of a print job.
- The reduction of waste makes your cost to print per tag lower.
- Combining multiple templates into a single template reduces the time that your personnel must stand in front of a printer watching it print so that they can change stock every few minutes.
- Combining templates reduces the number of stocks that you must maintain and track usage saving hundreds if not thousands of dollars in tag stock reduction.
Following is a sample of two shelf talkers “Every Day Low Price” and a “Temporary Price Reduction” both are printed from a single template using if/then statement created with the Relation Editor. By printing different talkers or labels on the same page, you eliminate redundant stock, reduce stock waste from partly used pages, and more importantly, greatly reduce labor “manning” a printer changing stock from one type to another.
The sample shelf labels shown here are printed with a single template. One set of relations controls whether the retail price is printed in the Yellow Price Box or not. In this example, the relation is testing the department. If the department is the “HBA” department, the store needs a narrower label so all the data prints to the left of the Yellow Box. In the Yellow Box the words “Tear Off” are printed with arrows pointing to a perforation in the label that enables the user to hang a narrow shelf label from the same page as wide labels. If the department is not “HBA” the entire label is used. This eliminates creating two separate batches in your POS or back-office system and running both of those batches through a printer and the user no longer must stand in front of the printer to change out stock from wide labels to small labels.
The next set of relations in this example is for the color bar. Some stores use one color of label for grocery and different colors for other departments or DSD labels or in some cases different colors for different suppliers. In this example, a relation tests for the department or the vendor (depending on need) is created and prints the required color bar (using a color laser printer) to match the supplier or department.
The tags can be printed in color order, sub-ordered by department, sub-ordered by UPC number or any order needed.
Printed Samples here
Data Synching
- As DESIGN-R-LABELS reads data, it can store that data in its internal database depending on management preferences.
- DESIGN-R-LABELS can be set to automatically read POS or Back-Office data and update its data to match the data in the POS and/or Back-Office system.
- DESIGN-R-LABELS can read a POS/Back-Office or any third-party data file and update its internal data file to match.
- DESIGN-R-LABELS has Filters built-in to display various lists of data such as:
- Imported Items
- Items that had data changes such as price, size, etc.
- Items whose compare item has changed such as House Brands More
House Brand Marketing
- DESIGN-R-LABELS can ease the job of making signs for House brand products compared against their National brand competitor.
- You can link a House brand product to any National brand item that you wish.
- DESIGN-R-LABELS tracks the National brand price changes. When its price changes, it flags the linked House branded item.
- Using the Filter function, you can view all House brand items that have been flagged.
- You can then either print new signs or pull the old out-of-date signs in front of the House brands.
QuickQ and N-Aisle Printing
- Quickly print a sign or label just by entering the UPC or Reorder number. This assumes that you are using the option for DRL to store your product data within the application.
- This option also supports (N-Aisle Printing) scanning an item in the aisle. Once the item is scanned, you have four options to print the requested sign, talker, or label.
- Print to a printer in the store’s office, laser, and/or desktop roll printer(s). It can print in the order scanned.
- Great solution for a small store
- Print to a mobile or “belt” printer that you are wearing in the aisle.
- DRL prints a label on belt printers that looks just like the label that is printed on a laser printer. Most competitive systems print a “temporary” label which means you must make a second trip down the aisle to replace the temporary label.
- Print to one or more roll printers on a RTI Powered Mini Cart. This cart can support up to four or more desktop roll printers.
- Now you can print multiple label and talker types in a single pass down the aisle. Plus, desktop roll printers carry a much bigger roll than belt printers, meaning fewer roll changes and cheaper labels.
- Print to a RTI PowerCart that can support desktop roll printers (for shelf labels and shelf talkers) and a laser printer for sign printing.
- Print shelf labels, shelf talkers, and signs in a single pass down the aisle.
- Print to a printer in the store’s office, laser, and/or desktop roll printer(s). It can print in the order scanned.
Not all features are in every version of DESIGN-R-LABELS On-Line purchased - Essential, Preferred, or Creative.
