It’s been said more than once, that a new display technology takes 20 years to go from lab to marketplace and up to that many more years to begin to make a profit. Well new display technology kid on the block, Tred Displays ("Tred" is short for Tri-chromatic Reflective Electronic Display) (Albuquerque NM; www.treddisplays.com) is bucking that trend by an order of magnitude, going from lab to commercial use in about two years.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor

We had a conversation with co-founder Dr. James Caruso on his new proprietary reflective display technology, which is bi-stable, thin, light-weight, completely reflective and extremely low power - a true green-tech display. It offers the signage industry the ability to add a very low powered dynamic component to traditional printed signs of virtually any size.

Tred sees this technology empowering a new class of HybridSigns ("HybridSigns" is a Trademark of Tred Displays Corporation) composed of dynamic digital content and printed graphics.

At the core of Tred technology are proprietary magnetic composite fibers called MOEs (Magneto Optical Elements). Tred scientists have developed new multi-composite material that combines optical plastics with high power NEO (Neodymium Ferrous Boron) magnetic alloys. After manufacturing, these MOE fibers are magnetized and align with themselves creating a unique, bi-stable reflective electromagnetic display. Tred pixels (or rather MOEs) are completely stable and require no power to sustain an image. The MOE fibers are coated one one side with white, and black on the other side. To change the display image, MOEs are written with a short magnetic pulse. The magnetic pulse is created by Tred’s Electromagnetic Backplane technology. In about 50 milliseconds the MOEs "flip" to the alternate color state — not very fast for conventional displays, but fine for many signage applications.

They use an electromagnetic back and front plane rather than a TFT found in LCDs to offer a very low-cost solution. The other unique part of the technology is the reflectivity. "There is no light generated, making us the most green dynamic display technology available today." Caruso said. The technology is so low powered, they can run on AA-battery packs and refresh data from wirelessly that essentially stay in "sleep mode," wake-up and send a small power burst to make dynamic change, and then go back to sleep until the next change is required.

Tred will combine its reflective advantage with printed signs such as inkjet printed signs and target the indoor and outdoor signage space adding this dynamic component to a tried and true solution. Another benefit of their approach is the dynamic component can be embedded into conventionally printed signs, done on existing equipment, without change to the manufacturing workflow.

Tred’s goal is to bring to market a series of display products and attain significant market penetration within 3 years by selling its products direct to US electronic sign manufacturers and through leading distributors worldwide. Caruso told us the company is backed by Flywheel Ventures as well as Sojitz, Japan’s 5th largest trading company and they are exploring markets both here and in Asia.

We think that the Tred team has done their homework well and not only developed a unique low powered display technology, but identified a gap in retail signage and filled it with their solution. In the process the company has created a new hybrid sign market that brings the advantages of dynamic signage to a much larger retail and outdoor signage space.

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