News
Skate shop glides from signage to kiosks
July 23, 2006
This article appeared in the Retail Self-Service Executive Summary, Summer 2006.
Some shoppers cruise to the mall in mid-sized automobiles to sort through racks of chiffon skirts and polka dot shirts while listening to piped-in jazz. And some shoppers ride to their favorite store on wooden boards and bang their heads to heavy metal while they buy bearings and black T-shirts.
West 49 courts the latter. And when the Canadian skateboard shops realized they could increase sales by getting their customers to hang out longer, they turned to self-service for the answer. The company built nine pilot stores, with projection screens showing skate videos, music videos and commercials. They built stages to host rock bands inside the new stores. And they installed multimedia kiosks.
"(The kiosks) provide another element of the shopping experience for our customer, just to expand on the community that we've started to build online and try to integrate that into the store experience," said Brent Laderoute, West 49 head of advertising. "A lot of the music content is uploaded by independent bands or bands on smaller labels. They upload it to our Web site and that same content also is available on our kiosks."
West 49 contractedADFLOW Networksto deploy digital signage and manage the signs' content. The company already showed in-store video on traditional media, and upgraded its delivery onto ADFLOW's Dynamic Messaging System.
The ADFLOW DMS is a Web-hosted solution for remote managing networks of digital signs. ADFLOW consistently emphasizes the "zero IT architecture" required to run DMS, which appeals to retail chains that don't typically maintain on-site IT staff.
"They run skateboard videos on screens in their shops — kids knocking their heads, all that scary kind of stuff," said Wayne Ruttle, ADFLOW Networks' vice president of sales. "Half the problem was the monitor was turned off, or the DVD player didn't work, that kind of stuff. They were digging (remote content management). That was a no-brainer."
The two companies' collaborative efforts evolved into building a system of entertainment kiosks.
"One day, I was in a meeting with (West 49), and they were discussing how they can keep kids in the store longer," Ruttle said. "Twenty minutes more in the store equates to $20 more per kid. So we said we'll throw a kiosk in there and call it a jukebox, or a video box. A kid could go in there, sit on a stool, put headphones on and watch videos or listen to music."
The Compar kiosks employed touchscreens byElo TouchSystems. The pilot was successful — enough so that West 49 plans to build on its success.
"We're definitely going to build on the functionality," Laderoute said. "It's mostly entertainment, but we plan on expanding what is offered in the kiosks. We've had a few concepts that will actually be really cool coming in the next six to 12 months."
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