“They shape cityscapes as well as shopping stations: Pop-up stores appear ad-hoc in attractive spaces—here today and somewhere else tomorrow. Major brands are not the only ones to be using these short-term spaces to accompany product launches, support campaigns, benefit from the seasonal business, and position their messages at short notice. Onliners are also discovering the pop-up store as a brand ambassador for the analog world.
But how can the agility of pop-up stores be combined with the constantly increasing demands of customers looking for a modern shopping experience? They expect the temporary locations to offer the same popular digital amenities as the large flagship stores: Customer hotspots, a seamless interconnection of stationary and online shopping, digital advertising space, virtual reality, and much more.
Furthermore, large chain stores are looking for ways to implement end-to-end digitization without system breaks. The competition is forcing them to keep costs and workloads to a minimum. A long-winded application for a broadband connection is just as counterproductive as the time-consuming installation of digital infrastructures in temporary small spaces.
The key lies in highly integrated box solutions for end-to-end shop digitization at the push of a button. All you need on location is a power connection.
These boxes are available even now; they rely on proven technologies such as Wi-Fi 5 and LTE, ESL and SD-WAN. With a look to the near future, they are set to become even more attractive and a real game changer, especially when we consider virtual reality. After all, the next generations of wireless and mobile high-performance technologies are already in the starting blocks in the form of Wi-Fi 6 and 5G.
Like LTE, 5G pop-up spaces connect to the broadband internet within minutes, without a provider having to install a line. All you need is a SIM card. However, 5G is bringing a big boost to transmission speeds, and at the same time the latency times are being cut to just milliseconds. Under ideal conditions, downloads can reach up to 10 Gbps.
Equally powerful is Wi-Fi 6, which provides better local networking than ever before. It is designed to work in high-density environments with large numbers of Wi-Fi clients—a common scenario for the point-of-sale at hip locations in a premium city-center location. Customers can experience products and brands like never before thanks to virtual reality based on Wi-Fi 6 hotspots and extremely fast Internet access. Shop operators, in turn, have a continuous, real-time overview of their inventories. The integrated ESL technology ensures automatic, fully digital price labeling on the shelf.
The key to the economical and fast provision of all these digital services is SD-WAN, the Software-Defined Wide Area Network. Traditional chain stores in particular benefit from the highly automated network configuration that is typical of the technology.
It enables new or temporary locations to be integrated into the corporate network at the click of a mouse and managed centrally from the cloud. Even the most complex digital services are available at the click of a mouse—and the pop-up location quickly becomes a digitized brand ambassador that has the same brand-building impact as large, elaborately designed flagship stores.”
Author: Christian Schallenberg, CTO and member of the extended Management Board at LANCOM Systems