Altierre Unveils Ultra-Low-Power Wireless Platform

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwire) - Altierre Corp., a provider of wireless dynamic pricing solutions for retailers, unveiled its wireless platform for large retail chains—a green technology with the potential to save billions of sheets of paper currently wasted on price tags and marketing messages. It provides a unified infrastructure for a host of applications, beginning with Altierre's dynamic pricing and signage system.

"We are pleased to bring to market an end-to-end solution that will finally advance retail into the digital age," said Altierre Chairman and CEO Sunit Saxena. "The system is currently live at one of our partner's stores and is now ready for commercial deployment across retail chains. It is very gratifying to see the elimination of the enormous amount of paper and ink wasted by the daily printing of paper price tags. Our proprietary electronic system has also demonstrated a significant improvement in pricing accuracy, thereby eliminating pricing errors typical of paper-based price signage."

Altierre innovations break technology barriers on multiple fronts at a cost point that delivers the ROI needed for large-scale adoption in the retail industry. The supermarket vertical alone has a market opportunity of over $10 billion.

Where others have attempted and failed to create a cost-effective paperless pricing and promotions system, Altierre's Wireless Display Tags entirely eliminate the need for paper overlays, offering the first ever completely electronic shelf label (ESL) solution. In addition, Altierre said it has achieved a per unit price point that is far below what others in the space have ever been able to offer, making the rollout of hundreds of thousands of ESLs affordable to chain-based retailers for the first time.

The system efficiently delivers real-time, chain-wide dynamic pricing, improves price accuracy, sharply reduces costs and paper waste, and enables targeted communications with customers and employees. This eco-friendly solution creates a paperless environment for grocers and other retailers, providing a better shopping experience, cleaner-looking aisles and saving literally tons of paper currently used in paper price tags and displays. It is estimated that a typical national supermarket chain with 1,000 stores wastes roughly 50 million sheets of paper annually.

Altierre's ultra-low-power, low-cost system is designed to power the "store of the future" with a wireless platform that provides an infrastructure for merchandising, productivity and consumer shopping experience opportunities. "Creating an umbrella wireless platform will reduce our customers' infrastructure costs and implementation problems, and will foster the development of additional applications that will improve productivity and positively impact the bottom line," Saxena added.

An Array of Innovations
Altierre's solution combines a host of technology innovations. The company has developed its own low-cost, long-range RF technology, proprietary low-power RF and display chips, display technology, systems integration and software technology.

The ultra-low-power communications and display technologies open a new frontier in the ability to communicate with battery-powered wireless display nodes across hundreds of feet without the need to re-charge or change batteries for years.

Altierre's software technology platform is built on top of its custom RF technology stack which allows for a massively scalable ultra-low-power RF client network of displays, sensory and active/passive RF tags that coexist in an integrated fashion within its long-range RF network. The Altierre appliance sits as a local node in a distributed computing network to provide control and communications via its RF network. It provides integration with other local appliances, contains system monitoring functionality and enables applications such as electronic pricing solutions, inventory and store operations, sensor networks, supply chain, and asset tracking. It also has built-in support for future applications when RFID finally arrives on the products.

Altierre's system is installed and supported as a complete turnkey solution for every customer.

Altierre has been developing its wireless platform with several of the United States' top 10 grocery chains under signed agreements. The company recently announced a second closing of its Series C funding, through which it has raised $30 million from prominent VC firms to rapidly expand its production and manufacturing in anticipation of multiple implementations. Altierre has raised a total of $60 million to date.

About Altierre Corp.
Altierre Corp., a leading provider of wireless dynamic pricing solutions for retailers, provides single-platform hardware, software and other IT solutions that enable chain-wide dynamic pricing, improve price accuracy, sharply reduce costs and paper waste, and improve communication with consumers from the onset of the shopping experience to the point-of-purchase. Altierre is a winner of the Red Herring 100 Award, a selection of the 100 private companies based in North America that play a leading role in innovation and technology. Incorporated in 2003, Altierre is headquartered in San Jose, CA.