By Heather Newman

Iva Wilson can picture a world where prices on store shelves always match what rings up at the register, managers can put items on sale without scurrying around to change signs, and newspaper vending machines update themselves to trumpet the latest headlines.

Her Ann Arbor-based company, Gyricon Media, is making those visions a reality.

Gyricon just opened a manufacturing plant to make what it calls smart paper. It's a product that looks like sheets of light gray plastic, with dark gray letters that can be changed with a wave of a handheld wand or a touch of a button.

Once the characters are changed, they stay that way until a new charge is passed through them. So the whole system uses little electricity and offers terrific contrast and a wide viewing angle when compared to typical display screens. It's also significantly cheaper.

How much cheaper remains to be seen, because it's early in the process. Prices depend on how many displays of the same type are made, but Wilson and other company officials are reluctant to discuss general estimates.

A small group of companies is developing flexible plastic displays, but so far they're coexisting comfortably in what is expected to be a hot marketplace.

E Ink, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff, has done some retail work but is concentrating on frequently changed computer-like uses for its product. It's working on things like newspapers that could store the day's stories, flip the page with the touch of a button and run off a small battery pack.

Dow Chemical and other companies are working on light-emitting diodes made from plastic. They make bright full-color screens for cell phones now and the screens could become quarter-inch thick TVs eventually.

But Gyricon is alone in concentrating solely on the retail market, a focus born from the unique background of its founders.

Originally, their smart paper product was conceived in Xerox's famous Palo Alto Research Center in California, where Gyricon still maintains an office.

It was spun off in 2000. The headquarters moved from Palo Alto to a 48,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Scio Township in January, and the plant started production late this summer.

Chief Executive Geert de Haas started working for the privately held company in 2001, after having been an angel investor. He married the raw product with his background in the software that runs point-of-sale systems and inventory controls for retailers. The Ann Arbor link is Wilson, who was president of Philips Display Components Co. before becoming a consultant working for de Haas and eventually president of Gyricon.

Smart paper consists of a circuit board coated in copper, divided into regions based on what the customer wants to display.

It's coated with a thin layer of tiny plastic beads the diameter of a human hair, colored half black and half white. The beads are surrounded by minuscule pockets of oil so they can rotate freely. Mixed in the plastic that makes up the beads are elements that are attracted to positive or negative charges. The whole assembly is covered with a clear layer of plastic that's coated on the inside to carry an electric charge.

To make the sign work, a particular region is hit with a positive or negative charge. Depending on the charge, the beads spin so their black or white faces are pointed out, and remain that way without any additional electricity until another charge changes them.

So far, the company has tested its signs as above-rack displays at Macy's and Sears Canada. The signs had batteries, and were wirelessly connected to the stores' databases of products.

A test is under way for Wall Street Journal newspaper boxes. Smart paper displays attached to timers change automatically to feature the section or product of the day.

Full production probably won't begin until 2003, Wilson said.

"It's unlikely that we will replace a computer display. We think it's going to revolutionize the retail industry," she said. "But we don't think it's going to happen overnight."

The Author
Heather Newman is a columnist for the Detroit Free Press.