Champs Sports, a division of Foot Locker, recently celebrated the opening of its New York flagship location at 10 Times Square—a multi-level property that is nearly four-times the size of its previous location and boasting 8,160 square-feet of retail space.
“At Champs Sports, we are always looking to bring the best retail experiences to our customers, and to establish ourselves as the go-to destination to find leading athletic brands. The Times Square store offers the best assortment of the top brands that shoppers know, love and have come to expect from Champs Sports,” said Bryon Milburn, VP and GM, Champs Sports. “The new store has a prominent exterior presence with an LED display spanning 68 feet by 23 feet across prime Times Square real estate. Inside, there are four additional digital screens to allow for robust, interactive storytelling throughout the customer journey.”
INTEGRATION SOLUTIONS
To achieve this sprawling visual display, Champs Sports engaged New Hartford, CT., integration and technology company, Activate the Space (ATS) to design and integrate several LED walls, including a massive two-story wall on the side of the escalators, and the media play engine for the large outdoor LED wall on the front of the building.
“There are four indoor LED displays,” explained Christopher Pelzar, CEO and managing partner, Activate the Space. “The LED panels used are a special Activate the Space OEM-designed panel produced for ATS by Absen, one of the largest producers of LED panels in the world. The outdoor screens were provided by SNA. Activate the Space provided the entire design and build of the indoor LED displays and acted as the “Client Representative” for the choice and specification of the outdoor LED displays, which were supplied and integrated by SNA.”
In addition to the indoor and outdoor LED systems, ATS also designed and integrated a multi-zone Bose Audio System complete with new ATS Core Control touch panels, which enables opera-tions of the entire audio and video systems as well as allows the ATS Technical Services to remotely operate or interrogate the system via the cloud from any device. HD Media Playback is provided using Brandcast Solutions powered by Signagelive and IAdea and allows cloud-based scheduling solutions, which power the large outdoor LED walls on the façade of 10 Times Square.
“We chose Signagelive for this project because of the cloud-based distribution, advanced scheduling interface, and the support of multiple media players such as IAdea, BrightSign, Apple and PCs,” Pelzar said. “The media players chosen are 100 percent solid state, providing a long-lasting and highly reliable solution. Signagelive is used to schedule all of the content in the location including the indoor and outdoor LED displays by ATS. [We chose] Signagelive because its cloud-based architecture and workflow allows us to have multiple users access the digital signage in this store from anywhere, on any device, at any time. This has proved to be a major advancement over our own legacy systems and has allowed the ATS creative and technical staff to be more responsive and productive to our clients’ needs.”
STORE BRAND
Designed to be flexible, “The Arena” layout of the store allows Champs Sports and its vendor partners to tell key stories in new and creative ways, enhancing the customer shopping experience. Within this new layout, leading athletic brands will have elevated brand experiences with cross-category product offerings, allowing customers to easily navigate by brand and identify sought-after products more efficiently.
“The new Champs Sports store in Time Square demonstrates how digital signage has become core to design and customer experience for progressive retailers,” said Jason Cremins, CEO and founder of Signagelive. “Activate the Space understand how to work with major retailers and brands to turn their ideas and stories into high impact digital environments. We are proud to be associated with such an iconic and high-profile project.”
