It goes without saying that wireless barcode printers can improve efficiencies in retail operations. The ability to print real-time information, on demand, saves time, effort and money – all essential for achieving competitive advantage.
Employees can print labels, vouchers, receipts, or tickets at the point they need them and place products on promotion at a moment’s notice.
You can also conduct price audits and relabel items quickly and print receipts as part of a mobile point-of-sale solution. Plus, printing barcodes enables more efficient inventory management and can improve efficiencies in your physical store.
Wireless printers, especially handheld mobile printers, from manufacturers such as Zebra, can help lower retail printing expenses, improve productivity of your teams and increase customer satisfaction.
How do retailers use wireless barcode printers?
- Identify products – Labelling goods received to identify them or printing routing labels to indicate where they are on the shop floor
- Price – Printing product pricing labels on demand for discounts or promotions
- Returns – Re-label returned merchandise or print shipping labels on demand for store transfer or return to the distribution centre
- Shelf – You may print shelf labels with barcodes and price details to go into plastic shelf ticket holders or out-of-stock labels
Here’s a look in more detail at how wireless printing delivers efficiency and cost savings in retail:
Streamline shipping and receiving
Additionally, whether wireless stationary or wireless mobile printers are used to create shipping and receiving labels, the store saves on rewiring costs if the configuration of the backroom changes. Workers can easily move printers and add new printers to the network without incurring the time and expense of rerouting or installing new network cable.
Businesses can easily network wireless printers to a host computer located elsewhere in the store, which often eliminates the need for a dedicated PC at the labelling area. In addition, mobile computers can reroute print jobs on demand, further reducing the need to keep a PC in the back room just to store shipping and label format information.
Improve traceability and inventory management
By tagging packaging or the actual item itself with an RFID barcode suppliers and retailers can gain real-time inventory information and significant time savings over standard UPC barcodes.
As the retailer receives products, an RFID reader automatically scans each item in the packing material, and updates the retailer’s inventory system, which then verifies product type and quantity.
Scanners in the store track the item’s purchase, or if the item leaves the store without the shopper paying for it. The enhanced visibility allows a store to reduce stock-outs, boost the shopper’s buying experience, and increase sales.
Simplify shelf labelling
Producing shelf price labels and promotional labels with wireless mobile printers, instead of large format printers can save retailers thousands of pounds annually through improved productivity and reduced media costs.
Using a mobile printer linked wirelessly to a handheld computer allows workers to print bar code shelf labels and in-aisle promotional labels at the precise location with accurate information – eliminating trips to the stockroom or back of the store to pick up printed labels.
Employees can also use wireless barcode printers to create new shelf and item labels for price changes. Daily or weekly price changes can be loaded into a handheld mobile computer with software that plans the most efficient route for workers to manage the aisles. The mobile printers create new shelf or item labels and wirelessly send a confirmation to the pricing database.
Enhance customer experience
Using a mobile point-of-sale (POS) system reduce line lengths or wait times and improve the customer experience. Adding a lightweight thermal printer to the POS system enables your store to print quality receipts and return labels with printed bar codes and graphics, instead of the low-quality receipts associated with impact printers (oldest type of printer that works by direct contact of an ink ribbon with paper).
Thermal printers are also durable enough for outdoor use at garden centres, building supply stores, and other retailers offering seasonal goods like flowers, or Christmas trees.
Reduce costs
With wireless networking, printer expenses drop since the use of cables for communication between mobile printers and handheld terminals adds to the printer’s total cost of ownership over time.
Zebra barcode printers
Zebra mobile wireless printers are lightweight, easy to use, and durable, and offer outstanding print quality and graphics. Retailers can use wireless mobile printers to produce high-quality bar code labels, RFID tags, receipts, coupons, and tickets using a variety of media.
The ZQ600 Series mobile printers offer fast, dependable wireless connections, delivering instant availability for your staff and maximum power efficiency.
The ZQ600 also features one of the highest battery capacities of any Zebra mobile printer. The patented Power Smart Print TechnologyTM ensures the exact amount of power required is delivered for the highest quality printing and PowerPrecision+ technology makes it easy to identify aging batteries before they impact productivity.
The ZD400 desktop printers are another great option for retail spaces and ideal for printing labels. They can be easily transported on a cart or with Zebra’s optional carrying case. Print on the spot to reduce steps and increase productivity.
If you have any questions about wireless barcode printers for retail, please get in touch with our experts at enquiries@expd.co.uk.
