By Mariah Montenegro
Entirely East Lansing staff writer
Traveling around East Lansing, the abundance of retail stores and local businesses is hard to miss. Step inside any store and they all have one thing in common: price stickers. Michigan government is trying to do something about it.
On Jan. 19 during his State of the State speech, Gov. Rick Snyder addressed how he plans on making changes to the state of Michigan. One change will potentially impact the businesses of East Lansing.
Eliminating the requirement that price stickers appear on all items would save the state’s retail industry approximately $2 billion each year. Only one other state requires price stickers to be placed on every product sold by retailers.
A popular stop for many in East Lansing, Urban Outfitters, has price stickers on merchandise throughout the store.
Price stickers are the Urban Outfitters way. Price stickers have been used since 1976 and would create more problems for many corporations.
In the long run, it would end up costing the company more to adapt to a new system.
Manager of the East Lansing store located at 119 E. Grand River Ave, Alex Reifenburg thinks a possible change to the current state pricing law, “sounds ridiculous.”
Not only does he oppose changes, he had not even heard about Governor Rick Snyder’s proposal.
Reifenburg was not the only person involved in retail that had not heard of the possible removal of price stickers.
Lindsey Rank, manager of American Apparel, 115 E. Grand River Ave., was unaware of the proposal as well, and is skeptical of what it could mean for her store. “It would create confusion with customers and slow down the process of pricing items,” she said.
All were not as skeptical, Chris Thomas, of CVS on 240 M.A.C Ave., feels this new change would actually benefit the store.
At CVS, customers have the option to check for product prices due to self scanners.
Thomas says implementing this law allows for more time to be spent on putting items on the floor, which would allow productivity to increase.
Whether or not East Lansing businesses support removing price stickers from products, Snyder plans to make changes that will benefit the state of Michigan.
Businesses in East Lansing will be awaiting the decision on how state government will affect their businesses.
“If the governor found the right alternative, then this would be the right decision,” said Rank “Maybe they could make recyclable price tags.”