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Huge Displays Light Up Canadian Retailer

Gridcast helped design and develop one of the largest indoor LED display implementations within the Canadian retail industry for fashion retailer, Holt Renfrew. The application has been described as a one-of-a-kind digital canvas or façade wall that reflects the unique architectural styling envisioned in the re-design of Holt Renfrew’s store location at Yorkdale Mall in Toronto. Gridcast’s vision for the project was to create a living architectural piece.

Background

The purpose of the display is to garner interest among shoppers walking by, evoke a positive reaction among them, and thereby entice them to enter the store.

Gridcast was tasked to come up with the best possible solution to create this architecturally integrated display. The company went through a proof of concept to benchmark technologies against one another in a simulated environment and test them to find the most suitable technology solution fit for the job.

Gridcast ended up partnering with Nanolumens, a custom LED display technology provider, and Dot2Dot, an exclusive Canadian distributor of Scala content management software. The display stands at the front of Holt Renfrew’s redesigned store and consists of six columns of seamless LED panels, each column measuring 29 feet high by 4 feet wide. The layout design provides Holt Renfrew with a digital canvas to display digital content on each individual column or content spanning across the entire façade.

Challenges

Due to the sheer size of the display, there were a number of challenges Gridcast had to overcome. This included developing content on a large scale and finding a technology with a wide enough viewing angle and one that has the ability to compete with the ambient lighting conditions within the mall. As well, it was important for Gridcast to ensure that the application was installed in a safe and secure manner.

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Solutions

In order to overcome these obstacles, Gridcast put together a list of criteria and requirements to help ensure the success of the deployment. Gridcast then simulated the environment within the company’s internal lab, setting up and testing the selected technology. To evaluate effectiveness, Gridcast used the criteria list as a guideline to follow allowing the company to clearly see what worked best. Simulating the environment helped Gridcast prevent any foreseeable issues that had the potential to arise during the actual installation.

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Results

The unveiling of the display helped augment Holt Renfrew’s reputation as a destination place within Yorkdale Mall because it has proven to be such a powerful and impactful statement piece. As a result of the deployment, Holt Renfrew witnessed an increase in shopper traffic in and around the store as well as an increase in sales.

This case study is reprinted with permission from the Digital Signage Connection and originally appeared here.

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