BILLA

Founded by Karl Wlaschek about 70 years ago, BILLA is an Austrian supermarket chain operating in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. Today, they are now a part of Germany’s REWE Group. They employ about 30,000 people across over 1,300 BILLA and BILLA PLUS stores in Austria. And as a big part of the community, they deliver products of excellent quality at family-friendly prices.

Requirements

BILLA’s German counterparts have already been using SOLUM in their stores for a while now. It was clear to BILLA in Austria that they needed to try a modern solution like this as well. And so they decided to equip their first store with SOLUM electronic shelf labels.

Results

BILLA Austria installed more than 9,200 SOLUM labels in their first store, ranging from the 1.6”, 2.6”, and 4.2” label variations. Today, they have SOLUM electronic labels in 37 BILLA and BILLA PLUS Stores.

For the first store, the BILLA Austria team was present for the installation, but they quickly realized how easy it was to operate and use the SOLUM labels. Since then, they’ve provided training materials on their e-learning portal for their other stores.

Roman Tullis, Employee Instore Management at BILLA Austria, enumerated the various advantages they experienced with SOLUM electronic labels. These include easy integration with their access points and systems, a robust protective case, and a battery life of 10 years before changing the batteries manually.

For the future, BILLA Austria plans to use the LED Indicator Light function of SOLUM labels to better monitor expiration dates and keep their produce as fresh as possible. They are also considering the NFC (near-field communication) capability of SOLUM labels to show URLs and photos for customers. 

Susanne Brenninger, Group Leader Instore Management, also emphasized how digital solutions like SOLUM electronic shelf labels are crucial for their employees, as they look for new staff and reopen their stores. Brenninger stated that when they changed their weekly offers, their employees were able to free up a lot of time and focus on customers instead. Their customers have noticed this and have expressed appreciation for their attention to customers.

Brenninger further explained that with SOLUM labels, their customers can be confident of the price accuracy from the retail shelves to the checkout. This adds more to the overall customer experience.

As for their sustainability efforts, BILLA Austria said that the paper savings with SOLUM labels help protect the environment.