Companies Get More Creative, Engaging and Interactive with the Latest Digital Signage Tech

How a Furnishings Company Digitized Designers’ Experiences

One case in point is Kravet, a home furnishings company with more than 40 showrooms across the U.S. and Canada. The company sells to the interior design trade and was looking for a way to expand its presence into more markets.

Showrooms require a large footprint, so Kravet sought a nimble, technology-focused approach to presenting its expansive selection of textiles and furnishings that could shrink the space needed while delivering a unique customer experience.

“It’s cost-intensive to set up a new showroom,” explains Jesse Lazarus, CTO at Kravet. “We wanted to move into smaller markets. We had to find a way to deliver samples of our product but provide that customer experience in a smaller way. How do we show our whole catalog to customers in a smaller space?”

The unique solution that Lazarus and his team came up with involved two digital display-centered customer experiences: the Workspace and the Pegboard.

The Workspace reimagines how designers do their work. Rather than negotiating a large physical space with rows of fabric and wall coverings hanging from the walls, Kravet’s customers approach a kiosk centered on a 21-inch Elo touch screen display and an Elo barcode scanner. The display hangs down from the ceiling and swivels above a worktable, allowing designers to easily interact with small fabric samples, scan their barcodes and retrieve information related to the materials on the touch screen.

“We wanted to refine the designer experience and deliver it in a comfortable space that lets our customers check samples, check stock, find more product information or just do general product discovery,” says Lazarus.

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The Pegboard offers another reimagining of the interior design experience. Where once a designer might leave a showroom with printed materials featuring the company’s furniture offerings (pulled from a “pegboard,” in industry parlance), Kravet offers a digital version accessible from a 55-inch Elo touch screen. Customers can walk up and immediately access Kravet’s entire collection and scroll through it.

“We wanted to create an endless-aisle concept, allowing our customers to get a quick read on product descriptions, build a list and send it to clients for feedback,” says Lazarus. “It gives us a great way to extend the capability of a showroom to display our offerings in a much smaller space.”

LED Displays Emerge as the Cutting Edge

The growth of light-emitting diode technology is driving more businesses to get creative about how they use digital signage, according to Garrard. LED signage delivers better picture quality, has a thinner design, is more customizable and is more energy efficient than a traditional liquid crystal display. “Today, LCD technology accounts for about 75 percent of hardware value within the retail vertical,” he says. “By 2027, we are expecting LCD market share to drop to about 60 percent of value due to LED’s growth.”

In Cartersville, Ga., the Savoy Automobile Museum is taking full advantage of LCD. Car enthusiasts visit the Savoy to see the vintage automobiles on display in its rotating exhibits.

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But many are also wowed by the custom digital displays that have been elegantly mounted onto the 65,000-square-foot museum’s modern architecture.

The Savoy’s theater features a concave, 18-foot-by-31-foot LG DVLED display mounted at the rear of the stage. Its curves blend into the room’s circular design. A 4-foot-by-24-foot LG DVLED marquee display is mounted above the theater’s entrance, informing visitors about its ongoing programming or announcing special private events being held there.

The curved digital signage inside the Savoy’s great hall is even more impressive: At 10 by 24 feet, the LG DVLED display is visible from any location in the hall.

“The great hall display is convex for better viewing angles,” explains Blake Johnson, the Savoy’s audiovisual manager. “We did not want it flat. Instead, we have it lean forward and down toward visitors for better viewing.”

All three of these stunning digital displays are made possible by custom wall mounting systems from Peerless-AV. “Our partnership with Peerless-AV began with the initial build,” Johnson says. “They worked with us on our ideas and designed the mounting systems. The process was seamless. Everything they did came together quickly, and the systems were in place in no time.”

The Savoy prides itself on frequent changes to its exhibits, which allow it to showcase the breadth of its automobile collection. Its digital signage plays an important role in communicating these updates to visitors. Being able to quickly refresh the museum’s displays to highlight new exhibits helps set the Savoy apart from other museums.

“We change up exhibits every month,” Johnson says. “We change the content on the digital signage once a week. It allows us to be much quicker and efficient in how we operate.”

How Interactive Displays Drive Revenue

Habit Burger & Grill, a fast-casual restaurant chain founded in Santa Barbara, Calif., has been known for friendly service and delicious burgers for 55 years. With the numerous disruptions that the restaurant industry has encountered over the past several years, including increasing takeout orders and the rise of food delivery services, Mike Repetti, Habit’s chief digital and technology officer, recognized that the chain was ready for a digital transformation.

“We wanted to be where the consumer was at, supporting the customization of food orders, allowing them to order over the phone, over the app, through a delivery service or for pickup, or order and eat in the restaurant,” Repetti says. “Part of our brand strategy was to deliver an all-access experience to customers, meeting the variety of ways that customers wanted to interact with us.”

To get there, Habit needed to update both its customer order experience and its cook team operations process. It chose a single solution that could deliver the benefits it sought. A total of 1,600 Elo self-service kiosks, using 22-inch I-Series touch screen displays to present the wide-ranging menu and input customer orders, were installed across the chain’s nearly 400 locations.

And 17-inch Elo touch screen displays were installed in the kitchens to assist team members in tracking and building orders.

“The kiosks are easy to use, and they offer a way to showcase our fresh ingredients to customers, allowing them to explore the menu,” Repetti says. “While the average order time on the kiosk is slightly longer than ordering directly from our team, it results in a higher average check.”

The kitchen displays are delivering value as well.

“Everything we do is cooked fresh to order,” Repetti says. “To do that at scale, we need throughput in the kitchen, and the touch screen displays really help with the speed and accuracy of service. We are seeing continuous improvements.”

For other restaurants looking to deliver an omnichannel experience like Habit, Repetti recommends thinking big. “It needs to be enterprise and multiuse,” he says. “We have 385 restaurants, so any solution we implemented had to be enterprise-scale. And we always look for dual-use technologies. It’s a win for us when hardware can be used to meet multiple needs.”