Nebraska Furniture Mart Selects Reflect As Digital Solutions Partner
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
Reflect, Dallas-based turnkey digital media solutions provider for out-of-home networks, was selected by Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM) as its exclusive digital solutions partner, handling the new Nebraska Furniture Mart store location in Texas.
Wayfinding at the main entrance
The Nebraska Furniture Mart store serves as anchor to the Grandscape development, a 400+ acre mixed use development which will provide a unique destination for retail, entertainment, dining and attractions.
Family owned and operated since 1937, Nebraska Furniture Mart is a brand rich in heritage. Nebraska Furniture Mart has always focused on unmatchable prices, top-notch customer service, and memorable guest experiences. When it decided to open a new store in Texas, management was aware of the challenges of introducing a brand rich in heritage to a new market, as well as the challenges that came along with the immense scope of the project. Reflect and Nebraska Furniture Mart worked together, using in-store digital media technologies to design an intimate and personalized shopping experience for a large format store.
“When selecting our digital signage partner, we needed a company that could offer direction from every level,” says Lee Summers, marketing technology manager for Nebraska Furniture Mart and Grandscape. “This was a new arena for NFM and we needed a full turnkey solution. Reflect delivered beyond what was promised and continue to prove to us they were the right choice, not only from a technical standpoint, but also a cultural connection. They quickly learned how NFM does business and how to seamlessly insert themselves into our operations. We look forward to many more retail leading projects with Reflect.”
Nebraska Furniture Mart of Texas provides an ideal environment for in-store digital brand media. With 14 unique digital experiences, and multiple instances of each, in the 560,000 sq. ft. retail space, the digitally enabled, one-of-a-kind, customer journey starts immediately when guests arrive. Reflect’s suite of digital media solutions provides NFM control over the management, distribution and presentation of HD media content and applications across their entire digital media network.
A 3×3 Video Wall
NFM focused on enhancing the shopper experience throughout the entire journey, including:
- Customer experience elements designed for an immense scale;
- Messaging and content to communicate brand heritage and values, timely information, and relevance to the in-store experience;
- Digital wayfinding and store directories;
- Interactive experiences allowing customers to find departments and products quickly and easily;
- Visual merchandising elements redressed daily to create an ever-changing and fresh store experience.
To help customers find their way to the products they want in the immense Texas location, Nebraska Furniture Mart turned to Reflect to develop a custom wayfinding application. Five interactive kiosks located at the main, west garage, and east Grandscape entrances, provide guests with store information, department locations, and optimal routes, all presented on a touchable 3D map of the store to help them navigate the endless selection of home furnishings and electronics. Reflect WayFinder provides Nebraska Furniture Mart with a turnkey, customizable digital mapping solution.
KitchAid signage
“Reflect WayFinder uses state of the art interactive technologies and builds on our proven ReflectView digital media platform,” says Bart Massey, COO for Reflect. “Together, this lets us deliver adaptive, dynamic location information in seamless interactive experiences that provide value by making the customer’s in-store experience fun, useful, and memorable.”
Reflect also worked with Nebraska Furniture Mart to develop a custom retail application that resides on 42” touch displays located on columns throughout the first and second floor of the store: 17 touchscreens in total. This interactive application helps customers locate specific items of inventory in the store, no matter how frequently they are moved. Notorious for remerchandising daily to keep their stores fresh and current on home furnishing trends, Nebraska Furniture Mart needed a way to ensure their customers were guaranteed to find what they were looking for when they arrived. Each item of inventory has its location available in real-time and is searchable and locatable by the application. The custom touch application is tied to the retailer’s back-end systems to ensure information shown to the customer is always automatically updated as inventory moves throughout the store. Interactive
Mosaic wall
Reflect also installed and runs 20 gift registry and credit application kiosks throughout the store. The kiosks are dispersed on all floors to provide guests with the convenience of using them when and where they are needed.
Nebraska Furniture Mart understands that a brand’s story is shaped by the customer experience. When it decided to open a new store in Texas, it was aware of the challenges of introducing a brand rich in heritage to a new market. Nebraska Furniture Mart wanted to make sure it delivered a Texas-sized branded experience that would resonate with their customers. Reflect installed a 3×3 video wall on a custom wall-mount system located at the back of the store. The video wall is used to display Texas related content and imagery that spans across all nine screens.
And for the curved wall at the Grandscape entrance of the store, Reflect custom designed and installed a video wall consisting of 27 22” Planar Tiles. The tiles are artistically arranged to enhance the architectural appeal of the curvature of the wall. Nebraska Furniture Mart is using the mosaic video wall to display beautiful content inspired by nature and Texas.
Further, Reflect installed and runs an 84” Planar 4K display located in the TV/Sound Department of the store. This incredible display is used to show compelling, emotion-evoking 4K content. And, since Nebraska Furniture Mart has a large inventory of televisions on display, so Reflect installed four media players that supply content to the TV Sales Wall, allowing Nebraska Furniture Mart the ability to display four different content playlists throughout the department.
There are also has four 1×3 video walls, two located in the customer service area and two located on walls visible as you ride the escalator. All of these experiences allow Nebraska Furniture Mart to play different content on each of the three screens or have one stream of content shown across the three screens.
Located high on structural columns at two locations in the store, the left and right side of the central entrance, are two 55” displays. Each pair of displays is mounted on two adjoining sides of the column. Nebraska Furniture can show distinct content on each of these screens or synchronized content that moves from one display to the other.
Beyond all this, Reflect installed two 40” displays mounted back-to-back on the trunk of the treehouse located in the children’s area of the store. This experience is aimed at entertaining the kids and is equipped with video capture and directional sound and can be used to broadcast store-wide messages or emergency alerts.
“Nebraska Furniture Mart has always offered its guests unmatched choices and a unique experience rich in tradition and value,” says Bill Warren, Reflect’s chairman and CEO. “With the recent opening of the Texas location and the attention paid to digital technologies that improve the overall in-store experience, we are excited to help shape the customer journey Nebraska Furniture Mart provides to their guests.”
Serving brands like Best Buy, GameStop, Target, Verizon, Macy’s, Cedar Fair Entertainment Company, The Container Store, Levi’s and Jockey, Reflect’s reputation as the go-to turnkey provider for digital media solutions has led to rapid growth, including multiple major client wins in the last 12 months.
In addition, Reflect’s evolution into a full-service digital media provider has resulted in outstanding demand for its suite of managed services, including content strategy and creation, interactive application development, content scheduling, hardware procurement, solution design, project management, installation, monitoring and field services.
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