I led both the mechanical engineering and industrial design team at Altierre where I was tasked to create a new design language across Altierre's entire product line of digital wireless retail price tags.
In my 4 years at Altierre, I created over 15 designs that went into market. Just a few samples are included below.
One of our highest volume products was what I coined the "W Tag". W was for win, because Altierre was somewhat stuck with a losing design of a digital wireless price tag that our new customer thought was too big. The challenge from our very large retail customer was to create a new design that "didn't look like a Hummer", yet be at a lower cost and maintain a 5 year battery life.
The new design, shown on the left, greatly reduced weight and eliminated paint for a more environmentally friendly footprint and easier recycling. the appearance was much smaller, while utilizing basically the same LCD and internal electronics. This was achieved by revealing the bottom of the LCD where the traces were and covering it with a protective film. This film gave the appearance of a continuation of the LCD which gave the screen a much larger look. Reconfiguring the battery locations and some reduction in assembly mechanisms further reduced the size.
The new design has been a large commercial success and was created in 6 different sizes. It is responsible for over 7 million units in new sales.
I also did allot of business development work with concepts for various retail customers such as Lowe's, Target and Whole Foods. Each had a unique problem to solve and I approached each with detailed attention and fresh approach. Quite a few of these resulted in new sales, especially with our European grocery retailers.
One of these designs was an 8" e-paper display that could sit on table tops. This design was completed, tooled and produced in approximately 2 months and is now in distribution.
It featured a stiff slip-in, back-printed Polycarbonate label that could be easily inserted and removed by store personnel allowing them to customize it with their store logo or other promotional displays.