Interview Spotlight: Borry Vrieling, Founder of eezeetags

How many years has eezeetags been around?

13 years ago since I was confronted with a self-bag-drop (SBD) during one of my business trips, in use was a standard tag, designed 60 years ago to be applied by a trained agent, and although I have been in labels ever since started my first job and was at the time a label business owner for 16 years, it was a horrible experience. I had trouble deciding what to pull to expose the adhesive, what to stick to which end. I wondered:

“Is there something to keep? What about the small sticker?” After breath taking minutes, I was able to hopefully attach the tag in the right way, and later with a cup of coffee reflect on which improvements were needed to invent a passenger friendly self-service tag!

How did you come up with the eezeetags technology?

The more than 30 years of self-adhesive applications for niche markets paid off in the end. I was able to put a few things together, thanks to a thorough material knowledge and experience in our own customer base, using the same unique patented adhesive for entirely different applications.

What is so special about the eezeetags product?

Eezeetags is based on a linerless technology, so there is no need to remove a paper liner to expose the adhesive. Secondly, the adhesive we use only sticks to itself, this makes mistakes almost impossible, passengers cannot loop-tag the eezeetags. Also, they do not stick to unintended surfaces like floors, machines, kids. The result of linerless is that we do not create any waste at the point of tagging, no rubbish on the terminal floor and no need for bins. Not only an environmental advantage but bins represent a possible security risk at the airport.

It all starts with happy customers; I think anybusiness should take that as their number one priority.

This describes the obvious advantages for the passengers, what about the more business‑related pay-offs?

It all starts with happy customers; I think any business should take that as their number one priority. It increases the passenger number throughput per hour, hence increases capacity on the same
footprint. But most importantly, eezeetags truly empowers passengers to have a staff-less self-service experience. And in times of staff shortages having a floorwalker – SBD ratio of 1:10 is on every customer’s list. You will always need floorwalkers, but these now can focus on the passengers that really are in need of help for different reasons, and that again enhances passenger experience and brings more meaning to the floorwalker’s job.

How many passengers are using an eezeetag already?

Since our start hundreds of millions of passengers have used an eezeetag, at airports like Amsterdam Schiphol, Heathrow, Gatwick, JFK, Dubai, Manchester, Milan and many more, but also the more regional airports often used by the LCC airlines are a big fan of our product. We are used in all known SBD machine supplier’s solutions. We created the eezeetags family; a unique co-operation of the world’s leading bag tag manufacturers, all producing eezeetags under strict quality controls, guaranteeing a consistent product performance, close to our customers.

How do you see the future of baggage handling at airports?

Self-service will grow massively, and this trend is not limited to the airline industry. I expect in the next decade a revolution in off-airport baggage services, like hotel drop-off, city dropoff, and home pick-up, which will grow. All examples of services where the actual knowledgeable airport staff will no longer be part of the end-to-end process. Hence the more you need to think aboutsimplicity and the prevention of making mistakes.

eezeetags Founder, Borry Vrieling is a true label industry veteran, after employment at Avery Dennison he started his own company 13 years later, serving technical niche companies with identification solutions based on tags and labels. Eezeetags was born out of his drive to improve simplicity after a stressful self-tag experience.