Coolest New Product at International Sign Expo

Gail Chiasson, North American Editor

“It was the ‘coolest’,” says Chuck Edwards, president of Tred Displays of the company’s iN-Series Reflective Digital Display Panels being named Coolest New Product at the inaugural New Product Showcase during last week’s 2009 International Sign Expo in Las Vegas.

Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Tred Displays manufactures low-cost, reflective, bi-stable ‘green tech’ displays designed for use in the signage industry. Tred’s display products use essentially no power compared to LED message boards and do not contribute to light pollution.

Tred’s target market is the current digital signage and digitally-printed static-image signage markets estimated at over US $17 billion.

TredPANELS are simple to use reflective digital displays, which make producing Smart Signs as easy as printing graphics. The iN47 is a four-numeral display designed for indoor numeric Smart Signs. Every iN47 tredPANEL comes complete with a built-in tredLINK wireless transceiver and is powered by an 8-AA battery pack, making installation and sign management simple. Applications include, for example: POP pricing, interest rates, temperature and time.

“We essentially sell the reflective acrylic white boards ready for the numbers, and the clients are responsible for the traditional printed graphics,” says Edwards.

The clients control the numbers. The Tred pixels are completely stable and require no power to sustain an image. To change a pixel, proprietary magnetic composite fibers called MOEs are written with a short magnetic pulse.

Tred Displays is launching its first product, a large format (300 – 600mm) numeric display. This new hybrid display can be seamlessly integrated with traditional printed graphics and is suitable for presenting any numeric information – great for gasoline prices, lottery jackpots, time and dates.

Founded in 2006, Tred’s goal is to bring to market a series of display products and attain market penetration within three years. Tred will sell its products direct to US electronic sign manufacturers and through leading distributors worldwide.

Tred Displays has received Series-A funding from Flywheel Ventures and Sojitz Pla-Net Corporation.

Flywheel Ventures is one of the premier high tech venture capital funds in the Southwest, with offices in Santa Fe, Albuquerque and San Francisco. Sojitz Pla-Net, part of the Sojitz Group, is one of Japan’s largest trading companies. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Sojitz Pla-Net markets a variety of high-tech products.


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