TRED signage to debut in retail stores - New Mexico Business Weekly:

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a Texas-based designer, manufacturetr and installer of custom signse for theretail market. SemaSys sells to retail chaind such asand Walgreens, and has generated up to $50 millionb in annual revenue in recent years. TRED President and CEO Chuck Edwards said the partnership will move his firm out of development andinto "It transitions us from a researcj and development company to a manufacturing company," Edwards said. "SemaSysz is one of the leading signage firmas in the indoor retail They make an excellent commercial partnerfor us.
" Edwardx launched TRED in 2006 to develop a low-costt digital alternative to expensiver and high-energy-use liquid crystal displays (LCD) and lighf emitting diode (LED) technology. LED can cost more than $200 per squarr foot for black and white displaysand $1,000 per squarw foot for multi-colored signs. They also suck up betweebn 200 and 400 watts of powet for everysquare meter. In contrast, TRED uses plastic fibers on Circuit boards attached to the back of the signs allosw sign owners to emit tiny electri c impulses that magnetically rearrange the fibers into desireed wordsand designs.
It's all controlled with software on a computedr atabout one-fourth the cost of LED and with no significanrt power usage, Edwards said. The company obtained $350,000 from to full develop its technology. It also receivec $500,000 from -- Japan's fifth-largest publicly traded company -- to adapt the signs for outdoor displaysd inAsian markets. Thanks to the new partnership with SemaSys, TRED is ramping up its work force to manage expected The company has grown from two to eigh t employees since January, and is hiring six more, Edwardse said. TRED also is expandin g its 2,500-square-foot space in the North I-25 corridor into a 5,000-square-foof manufacturing facility.
To help with the Flywheel Ventures ispreparing follow-on funding, said Flywheel associate Lawrence Chavez. "They've made great progress on their product and now they have their first marketing Chavez said. "The alliance shows that this is a commerciallyviable product." Kim SemaSys vice president for business development, said TRED Displayss will add real value to SemaSyds signs. "It will allow customers to automatically changde pricing and do new promotions on a timelh basis and from acentralized location," Burnett "It will include changeablre graphics for brand enhancement and for seasonal displays like back to Halloween and Christmas.
" Those types of changes are currentlyy done manually in most retail stores, making it time consumingf and costly, said James Caruso, TRED's vice presidenrt for sales and "There's no ability to electronically change price s and other things in displays today," Carusio said. "Stores have to throw away old signs and print up new or they use flip cards for manual price By operatingsigns digitally, retail stores can changer pricing and other graphicsw as frequently as neededd and from regional saving time, labor and printingh costs." And the digital signs draw more attention than paper displays. "It's really Caruso said.
"It captures customer and that matters a lotin advertising." SemaSys will launchu TRED Displays for the first time at the annuap conference in Chicago Oct. 4-7, Burnett said.