It started at a card show, watching vendors fight with price stickers.
Every table had the same problem. Pricing cards took longer than selling them.
I was walking a card show and kept noticing the same thing. Vendors were pricing cards with sticker guns, handwritten tags and printed labels. Every price change meant peeling a sticker off a sleeve or a slab, writing a new one and hoping it stayed put.
New stock made it worse. A vendor would buy a binder or a stack of slabs halfway through the day, and those cards would sit in the case with no price. Buyers had to ask about each one, so the vendor spent the afternoon answering "how much is this?" instead of selling.
Card prices move during a weekend, too. A grade pops, a set gets hot, comps change. Updating thirty stickers by hand means most vendors simply don't.
I thought there had to be a better way than sticker guns and writing prices by hand. Supermarkets already use small e-ink shelf labels that update wirelessly. Nobody had made them work for a card table, with a phone app that knows what you paid and how low you'll go.
That is Labeleon. The name is a label and a chameleon, because the labels change whenever you need them to.
"How much is this one?" should be answered by the label, not by the vendor, forty times a day.
Stickers vs Labeleon
| Task | Stickers and printed labels | Labeleon |
|---|---|---|
| Price a new card mid-show | Find the gun or a pen, write it, stick it on | Pick a label in the app, type the price, save |
| Change one price | Peel the old sticker, risk residue on the slab, relabel | Edit in the app, the label updates in seconds |
| Run a discount | A handwritten "20% off" sign and mental maths at checkout | Happy hour updates every label, and never goes below your floor |
| Know your floor while haggling | Remember it, or a coded note on the back | Scan the card and see paid and floor on your phone |
| Stop price swapping | Stickers can be moved between cards | Each label carries a code your app verifies |
From a show floor to a prototype
The show
Watching vendors juggle sticker guns, and buyers waiting for prices on unpriced cards.
There had to be a better way
Price stickers and handwritten tags were slow to change, easy to swap and hard to keep up with during a busy show.
E-ink labels
Retail shelf labels already solve this in supermarkets. We picked small Bluetooth labels that a phone can update directly, with no hub to set up.
The app
Inventory, cost and floor, happy hour and tamper checks, designed around how a card table actually runs.
Next: testing at real shows
A first set of labels goes into a real case at a real show, so the app is shaped by vendors, not guesses.