Esko says it will be true to its 'Ready for the Virtual Shop and Display Design' theme during its first attendance at EuroShop, the world’s leading Retail Trade fair, taking place in Düsseldorf (Germany) between 16th and 20th February 2014.

Joining Popai (the international association for Point of Purchase Advertising) in Hall 3, Stand E54, Esko will present retailers and brand owners its latest solutions for the design, visualisation and production of POS displays. A special focus will be on Esko Store Visualizer, a solution that enables hyper-realistic, real-time visualisation of the display designs on virtual shelves – shown during the fair on a huge 3D screen. With this set-up, Esko wants to underline the benefits achieved by its solutions such as shortened production times, optimized end results, more comfortable and easier approval cycles and, ultimately reduced costs.

Esko will work together with Reproteam, an Austrian large format print service provider, to show finished POS displays developed for a global Scandinavian supplier of household goods. Designed by the creative department of Reproteam, these will be printed on an industrial VLF digital printing device and finished on an Esko Kongsberg digital cutting table. Made of ReBoard? – a lightweight yet exceptionally robust paperboard – the displays are precisely customised for specific products such as secateurs and knives.

"Retail and trade shops are ready for the solutions of Esko. The virtual and real visualisation of packaging and display designs allows them to have a realistic view of the future product early in the development and decision-making phases. To meet the challenges involved with this, we provide creative and high quality solutions for packaging, display and shop design,” says Wolfram Verwüster, Esko Business Manager for Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

More than ever, POS displays do more than just displaying the product, they have become a channel to convey the brand promise to the consumer. Good displays seduce, inspire, and arouse the consumer’s curiosity. Today, brand managers are being challenged by the constant strive for efficiency in an increasingly diverse, global and heavily outsourced production process. They turn to their suppliers to manage this process without having to give in on creativity.

Thanks to Esko solutions such as WebCenter for online collaboration and approval, communication between all participants in the supply chain – often located in different sites and countries – is significantly optimised. Sources of errors and discrepancies are identified and addressed directly. Esko ArtiosCAD for 3D structural design and Esko Studio and Store Visualizer for 3D visualisation are designed to drastically reduce the time of sample and product development. Furthermore, the actual integration of products in a retail environment is optimised and time for planning reduced significantly. Ultimately this leads to higher quality products at lower production costs.

“Store Visualizer can also help retailers and brand owners take the process to a next level with a green screen, like those used in TV, to create a 3D virtual store - making the entire process from initial design to a well functioning design solution much shorter and cost-effective. These are all strong arguments for Esko to further profile its market leadership,” concludes Verwüster.