Suburban Seoul Bakery Using 38 Transparent OLEDs To Drive Unique In-Store Experience

July 4, 2022 by Dave Haynes

I wrote last month about a puzzling, at least to me, deployment of transparent OLED displays in a display window of a bakery/restaurant in Korea. Now there’s more detail available, with word that the store in suburban Seoul has 38 transparent OLED displays around its premises.

The bakery in Pangyo is a flagship location of Paris Baguette, doubling up as a research center where new bakery products and services can be tested first. The food and beverage conglomerate SPC Group, which runs the franchise, told a Korean publication that it went to LG with the aspiration of creating a “state-of-the-art bakery store that can provide people with a brand new shopping experience.”

The story on the bakery suggests the build-out of the digital cost about $463,000, which would mean something like $10,000 per unit plus all the related gear needed to light these up. $10K sounds about right, as these things are not mass manufactured and definitely premium-priced.

There are transparent displays tiled together facing out to what I assume is a shopping mall or some sort of indoor concourse. There are transparent dividers with messaging. There’s the previously detailed set of windows around the bakery itself. But what I like and have not seen before is the use of the transparent displays as a dynamic wall finish – with glass in front of wood wall material that shows animations.

Clever stuff. This seems crazy expensive and not the sort of thing that’s repeatable across franchises. But then I have no idea how this compares to the costs of designed spaces like this that use other materials. $10K per panel is just a bit pricier than drywall and a few layers of paint, but flagships often seem to go up with much bigger budgets than mainstream stores. I don’t know, but suspect LG may have provided preferential pricing so that it could use this store as a working showcase.

I don’t think transparent OLED is ever going to get past being a niche product, but this sort of project shows some nice possibilities when the design and budget both allow going outisde norms.

Here’s a video showing the store …