BrightSign delivers advanced showcase for high-tech cycling gear

A prototype kiosk played its part in launching the ODLO cycling product line at the European OutDoor Fair during July 2010 in Friedrichshafen, Germany. It will be a focus of attention on BrightSign’s stand (booth #DS19) at IBC 2010, which runs from 10-14 September in the Amsterdam RAI.

ODLO’s key goal in commissioning the kiosk design was to support the launch with a new approach to educate customers about the range. The company wanted to bring value to the product line, highlight it in a special way and especially showcase the technology behind new padding technology built into their cycle clothing.

The challenge for Imaculix was to provide ODLO with a high-end appearance on a modest budget. To ensure high reliability and simplicity in use, the solution would not be PC-based. Imaculix chose the BrightSign HD1010 media player as the alternative to complex PCs.

As Andy W. Bohli, CEO of Imaculix explained: “BrightSign’s exceptional HD image and video quality was a key factor for us, as our retail clients expect us to produce solutions that communicate their messages and branding to meet their very high standards. However, our customers, like us, are also budget-conscious and BrightSign is the only provider we’ve found that matches both criteria. In fact, it goes well beyond this, by also providing great reliability and versatile interactive features.”

Kiosk hardware and visual design were provided by ODLOs marketing communications consultants, RUN, whilst AV integration, touch screen interactivity and barcode scan abilities designed and implemented by Imaculix.

As well as providing a visual display, the kiosk also features built-in shelves, allowing padding options to be showcased. The presentation supports 24 cycling underwear products; each with between five and nine hot spots of detailed information and all available in three languages: German, French and English.

Barcode scanner interactivity
Specially designed ‘price’ tags affixed to every product, invite customers to scan the barcode to learn more about the piece of clothing. When scanned at a kiosk, the display shows the key facts and benefits of that particular item and invites customers to interact further by touching ‘hot spots’ on the image, which then displays further information about each piece of technology and the features ODLO has built into it.

A 23-inch touch display is integrated into the kiosk design. Through this, customers can browse the entire line of cycling wear using quick filters based on gender and categories. In addition, a Padding Finder application walks users through a series of questions in order to recommend the best padding and products for the individual usage.

The kiosk display can be powered on and off via an RS232 connection; and also through a remote control operated by store managers. Power control is implemented through built-in BrightAuthor software, which ensures that the display is the only item turned on/off. Meanwhile, the BrightSign unit remains powered-up, allowing it to receive remote content updates and enabling support where necessary via BrightSign Networking.

BrightAuthor

Imaculix used BrightAuthor presentation authoring software to create the complex kiosk operation. The presentation has close to 3600 assets; all connected to each other via touch and barcode trigger events. Despite this complexity, BrightAuthor enabled the application and presentation content to be delivered within a fast three weeks, with high-quality image and video content all produced in vibrant 1080p resolution.

“BrightSign’s versatility and ease of use allowed us to easily create a very complex interactive display with multiple interactive devices”, commented Imaculix’s Bohli. “In this case, the built-in support for touch screen and bar code scanning – and support of multiple languages – helped us to make the experience effortless and intuitive for ODLO’s customers. ODLO are very pleased with the result”.

Following the successful debut in July 2010, ODLO plans to begin rolling out kiosks to retail outlets from March 2011 onwards. As well as the new cycle wear, products supported by the kiosk are expected to be expanded to include their entire active wear collection. For the future, the company also hopes that the same kiosks will prove successful as an educational tool for training sales teams on new products.