Article
GlobalShop goes green
Designed-in technology, green products this year's big emphases.
March 31, 2008 by James Bickers — Editor, Networld Alliance
Billed as the world's largest tradeshow for store design, visual merchandising and in-store marketing, GlobalShop 2008 took place March 18-20 at Chicago's McCormick Place. It was the 16th year for the annual show and featured nearly 900 exhibiting companies across 300,000 square feet of exhibit space.
Doug Hope, founder of GlobalShop and group vice president of retail design for Nielsen Business Media, said there were roughly 15,400 attendees at the event. That's about the same number that were present last year, he said.
In keeping with the general spirit of the times, he said green retailing was a major emphasis — along with a few other rising trends.
"Fabrics are a big trend this year and green products are everywhere this year as well," he said. He also noted an increased presence for refined finishes, greater levels of in-store technology and more of an emphasis on designed-in tech.
Highlights from the show floor
One of the most eye-catching retail applications unveiled at the expo was tucked in the back of the Epson booth.
A nude mannequin stood against a black backdrop; about 15 feet away, a touchscreen kiosk showed a variety of clothing and accessory choices. When the user selects a shirt or dress or necklace, they are then presented with a variety of colors — and once a color is selected, that item is projected onto the mannequin.
With just a few more touches of the screen, shoppers can have the mannequin "try on" any number of combinations of products, colors and styles.
There was a lot more to see at the Epson booth, including projected digital signage cut into unusual shapes — a giant pair of sunglasses for instance, on an interactive application that lets shoppers try out different pairs of specs. On the back-end, a new software/camera solution keeps constant track of who looked at what in the store, where they stood and for how long, which can allow retailers to analyze the effectiveness of POP materials.
Muzak picked up two awards for its innovative booth layout, the Best Booth in Visual Merchandising award from DDI magazine and the Outstanding Booth trophy from Visual Merchandising and Store Design magazine. Within the store-like enclosure, 14 plasma displays showed black-and-white photos of faces representing various emotional expressions; in the nucleus-like area further within, a photographer snapped photos of passersby, which would enter the on-screen rotation moments later. Music for the environment fell into four categories - angst, desire, elation and pride — and was synchronized with the appropriate facial expressions, a stunning example of how to use audio and video to build an immersive and logical experience.
A partnership between digital signage company Symon and fixture manufacturer Madix Store Fixtures and Displays made its debut in the form of a digitally enhanced shelf system. The Easel is a metal shelf that fits into standard shelving brackets. Built into the front is a small-form-factor touchscreen that can run interactive digital signage applications. The media player that powers the application is tucked securely inside the shelf, with plenty of room for all of the required cabling.
Additional options include a receipt printer, magnetic card reader and speakers on the front of the shelf for audio. Roughly one-third of the shelf front is taken up by the screen, with the rest reserved for static POP signage.
Speaking of digital signage, a new entrant in the field with an impressive pedigree made its U.S. debut. Activate The Space was launched in late 2007 by former Panasonic executive Chris Pelzer and former AOL executive producer Robert Harris. Today the company not only designs, installs and configures digital signage solutions, they manufacture a sleek modular shelving system that can be configured in just about any manner a retailer desires (think, an Erector set for store design), with a modern aesthetic and built-in capabilities for hiding wires and easily adding mounting brackets.
Hong Kong-based 1-2-1VIEW also made its U.S. debut at GlobalShop. The company offers a line of wired and wireless media players, including one model with a built-in screen, as well as a Linux-based content management system. Next to their booth was Outform, an international firm that designs, builds and installs giant "attractions" for retail, such as a 10-foot-tall laptop computer for the Germany launch of Windows Vista and the giant characters for M&M World.
In addition to the event-driven attractions, Outform offers a line of out-of-the-box digital media players called iDISPLAY, designed to be placed on shelves and counters throughout a retail space. The iDISPLAY line also includes mounting options, floor-standing towers for product samples and POP materials, and interactive product merchandising displays.
Beatrice, Neb.-based 5Stat Retail Technology Solutions offered two innovative approaches to integrating RFID with the retail experience. At one end of the booth, attendees could take clothing into a dressing room; as soon as items are placed on the wall hooks, the interactive mirror springs to life, recognizing the items and suggesting matching accessories. While in the dressing room, shoppers can look at other colors and styles, and send a request for other pieces to store staff.
At the other end, an interactive retailing display designed for Oakley allowed shoppers to pick up a pair of sunglasses from a shelf and try them on. Again, the system uses RFID to recognize which pair has been removed from the shelf. While the shopper looks at himself in the mirror, he is shown information on the product and how it compares to others.
At MTI's sprawling booth, the emphasis was on SKU-activated merchandising with the company's "Intuition" product. Several displays for cell phones offered innovative twists on traditional layouts, including bases that light up when a certain model is selected on a touchscreen. The units also respond when a particular phone is picked up, displaying targeted marketing materials about that phone; meanwhile, on the back-end, managers can view detailed data of which phones were picked up, when and for how long.
Ovation In-Store was also focused on merchandising, and it demonstrated a very diverse array of solutions at its booth — from interactive toy displays for Fisher-Price and Nickelodeon to interactive merchandising for Motorola, from digital signage systems that snap a photo of a customer and display it on the store wall to shelving systems for cosmetics retailers.
Several companies had innovative tools for in-store audio, including American Music Environments, makers of the AME-2020 product suite which includes hardware, software and music content in a variety of styles. The hardware component on display included two proprietary sound cards, each of which contain four outputs — making it possible to drive eight different audio channels from a single computer.
Panphonics demonstrated its Sound Shower 2 speaker series, which delivers directional audio to very specific regions. The lightweight units can be hung or mounted virtually anywhere, creating ambient or marketing-driven soundscapes in target parts of the retail environment.
SoundTube had a similar directional-sound technology on display, but with an added twist: Thanks to a recent partnership with aroma company ScentAir, the company's ceiling-mounted FP Focus Point speakers can not only deliver targeted audio, they can emit a particular fragrance when a shopper walks below. ScentAir is a partner with numerous fragrance companies, and offers a library of more than 1,000 scents; the company had a particularly traffic-stopping booth, built around an old VW bus and a 1970's design vibe.
A stunning bit of "micro-signage" was unveiled at the Digital View booth. ActivPrint is a technology that allows static printed materials to be animated, using programmable e-paper. Pigment microcapsules respond to an electrical charge (black for negative, white for positive), creating an effect that looks like a printed page has come to life. Company officials said the cost for the technology is roughly halfway between printed POP materials and full-on digital signage.
Digital signage company Wireless Ronin showcased several of its recently announced projects, including the Sync interactive signage installation for Ford, Lincoln and Mercury, as well as the digital menu board system for KFC. Helius was also on hand explaining its HughesNet managed network offering. And Becker Communications stopped a lot of traffic with its visually arresting digital signage and POP designs, including a giant digital jack-in-the-box.
Channel M, which dubs itself the largest provider of out-of-home video in North America, announced a partnership with My Gym Children's Fitness Centers to develop My Gym TV, which will go "on the air" in April. Nearby, representatives from PRN were on hand to explain their in-store media products, which include Checkout TV, high-definition merchandising and category solutions for retail media.
Other digital signage items of note: Chryon showcased its latest display system, the HD 150, which is capable of full-screen HD clips as backgrounds, with layered graphics, text and animations on top; Israel-based Sheletron demonstrated its 3VUE Totem, a vertically aligned tower of three matching displays in a silver enclosure; AccuWeather.com announced an upgrade of its content service to include photorealistic graphics; and global retail marketing agency John Ryan, whose Screen Red product is used worldwide to power digital signage in banks, announced the U.S. debut of its standalone Web-based content management system Messaging Manager.
About James Bickers
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