HOUSTON -- Sometimes, a single point of difference can go a long way. Such is the case for the gasoline price signs outside a store. According to Bill Pickard, president of Houston-based PWM Electronic Price Signs Inc., less than half of the company's customers purchase light-emitting-diode (LED) signs, and when they do, color has become a point of differentiation. With everything from banks to churches using red or yellow LED price signs and message boards, it's easy for a gas station to get lost in the visual cacophony. Perhaps it's time to consider a sign of another color.[image-nocss]
PWM has developed an electronic gasoline price sign with white LEDs. Depending on what kind of image you're trying to project, that [signage] will stick out because people will recognize that as being something they've never seen before, Pickard told CSP Daily News. Chevron Corp. is using white LEDs on a blue background for its signage in Houston, helping its sites stand out from the competition, Pickard said. Pricing for the white model is roughly the same as that for other colors.
FutureMedia Displays, Carrollton, Texas, is also working on a white LED model, according to president Joseph Wilson, and should be available within the first half of 2006. Another major electronic sign supplier, Skyline Products, does not offer a standard model but can customize a sign to incorporate white LED at a customer's request.
Pickard reminds retailers that such things are subject to whims of fashion and can even run in a cyclical manner, with a certain technology or color in one day and out the next. He noted that segmented signs were all the rage in Europe until light-emitting-diode (LED) models hit the scene, but now, retailers overseas are returning to trusty segmented signs.
See the May issue of CSP magazine for more about how digital price signs are changing gasoline pricing at the street.
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