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August 31, 2006
ZBD Raising VC For E-shelf Displays
On the back of completing successful customer trials in the UK market, ZBD Displays has raised £2.86M, according to an announcement we received from Esprit Capital Partners
Co-investors include QinetiQ Ventures, The Dow Chemical Company and TTP.
The use of electronic displays in public places for advertising and among retailers is replacing paper at a fairly rapid clip, according to a recent article in the WSJ about outdoor advertising. It is not growing as fast as online advertising, but the spending on it is significant (see link below).
Although, ZBD is not in the outdoor ads business at the moment, we think that it benefits from the general trend of digitization of signage.
The startup's original invention was a bright, flat display (based on liquid crystal display tech) that does not use power to hold an image -- only when the image actually changes does the display need power.
It came out of one of Britain's military technology research units, Qinetiq. Over the years, it has had to figure out how to commercialize it, choosing electronic shelf pricing systems targeted at retailers. To do that, it also developed the software and systems to manage the pricing indicators, hone it for supermarkets, and then convince them to try it out.
In the meantime, competitors are emerging that compete directly, although the ones we looked at do not have the brightness and contrast that ZBD is showing, or they rely on infra-red and wireless tech.
So it still has a marketing and sales challenge ahead of it, and if it finds it too challenging, we say there enough potential acquirers that have shown an appetite in the recent past for such startups. ZBD has raised £14.9 so far, with Esprit's Prelude fund having invested a total of £5.6 million to own about a third of the company now.
Read - Technology Boosts Outdoor Ads (WSJ)
Posted on August 31, 2006 08:37 AM | Posted to Displays | News And Updates | Permalink
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