Austria's foremost retailer of sports equipment and sportswear has chosen BrightSign as the digital signage solution for its new futuristic flagship retail store - Eybl World Store Vösendorf. Four video walls driven by 28 BrightSign digital media players deliver Full HD content, custom produced for specific departments and synchronized over a secure network. A specially developed Internet portal allows store managers to upload content and enables the installation partner to offer proactive service and management of the players.
Intersport Eybl is by far the biggest retailer of sports goods in Austria, with 14 stores and 10 MegaStores throughout the country and 1.7million customers registered to its loyalty programme. Success comes from a combination of a massive range of products catering to all types of sport along with the knowledge and passion of its 1400 employees. Whether it's rock-climbing, hiking or skiing, cycling or soccer, fitness, athletics or swimming, shop floor staff live and breathe the company slogan: "Lebe deinen Sport" (Live your Sport).
The concept for its newest flagship store embodied both the leadership and passion of Eybl. Its ambition was not only to build the largest sports gear outlet in Austria, but also the most modern of its kind in the world. It is an entirely new sports store concept catering to all the senses of its customers: taste, smell and touch as well as hearing and sight.
Meeting the demands of audio and visual stimulation required stellar multimedia displays to bring footfall into the store, and to engage and inspire customers within the four-level sales area.
Modeled on the Olympic Stadium in Beijing, the new flagship store embodies lightness and transparency, with dynamic shapes and colors representing the success of Eybl through sporting spirit and innovation. Its softly curved, structured nest-shaped façade consists of 30 cm wide, 10 mm thick, grey anodized aluminum profiles, which run on a frame around the existing six-story building. Outside, billboards with seasonal sports motifs are integrated in the facade and in the evening, colored LED lights provide a dynamic and eye-catching backdrop.
ïżŒThe interior design provides unique and relevant space for each
sporting discipline. Shoppers enter the team sports division
through a tunnel, just as if stepping out onto a soccer pitch;
then footwear is displayed on a goal wall and can be tried-on at
the sub's bench. Likewise, customers looking for running
equipment find themselves in a high-definition video park
along with other joggers. Higher up the store, a replica
mountain hiking trail leads on to a climbing wall providing the perfect environment to test out boots, walking sticks and other technical equipment.
Intersport Eybl commissioned Lackner Mediasystems to create four video walls. One of these is located in the middle of the entrance area, and consists of four x four 46-inch displays, which stands out as the main visual highlight. Another eye-catcher is the display wall in the denim-theme area, which uses displays oriented vertically and horizontally in a combination that creates an unconventional, attention-grabbing presentation. Further two display walls, each with two displays are used within other themed areas.
BRIGHTSIGN IMPLEMENTATION
Each of the 28 screens is controlled by BrightSign HD210 digital display controllers and play Full HD content with individual displays in each wall synchronized via the BrightSign's Ethernet connection. The HD210 Networked Looping Model offers a robust media-handling platform for superior video and image playback performance, with Full HD 1080p video playback, looping media and simple-to-use playlist creation and publishing through the included BrightAuthor software. Its multi-zone and full screen layouts support video, images and text tickers, whilst networking capability enables Live Text, Twitter feeds, networked databases and RSS content feeds.
ïżŒThe Internet-connected BrightSign media players offer substantially
greater benefits to the end-user, as the AV integrator's CEO Udo Lackner
explained: "We believe BrightSign has a successful future in the growing
signage market, which is why we decided to standardize on it, and
recommend BrightSign rather than any other media player. It has proven
so popular with many customers as well as Ebyl, that we established our
own portal where the customer simply uses an Internet connection and the BrightSign will be automatically routed to our portal. The content administration functions built into the portal support easy handling of content updates for our customers.
"A further advantage of the portal is that we can offer proactive service and diagnostic reports, since the BrightSign players can be automatically accessed and controlled remotely."
The portal was developed by Mediasystems to help them manage the large numbers of customers using multiple BrightSign boxes. Customers can either upload content themselves through simple-to-use software, or subscribe to a full media service from Lackner, which pushes content out from the portal.
The service portal complements media delivery by ensuring that all players are working as they should. For most customers, the service portal also controls and monitors the displays, making sure that no customer has a blank screen.
It is possible for the Eybl flagship store installation to be managed, monitored and controlled without the portal; however Lackner's digital signage portal is used for Eybl stores in 10 other locations throughout Austria. These accommodate a further 20 BrightSign players making management virtually impossible without the intelligent portal.
THE OUTCOME
With all of the displays controlled via the Internet, store and product managers can quickly and easily make updates and revisions for seasonal, holiday and product changes without extensive IT and graphics training.
The dynamic visual displays throughout the store make for an immersive, authentic and engaging experience: one that satisfies the audio visual senses of Intersport Eybl customers and reinforces the leadership, passion and innovation of the brand.
For Lackner Mediasystems, BrightSign offers plenty of potential to keep developing innovative digital signage projects many years into the future. "We have been doing these kinds of projects for more than ten years. It is not difficult to make a perfect installation in the first place: the hard bit is building solutions where customers can grow with them and after many years it is still working well. That's what BrightSign offers us", concluded the Lackner CEO.
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