Products

586 x 43” Hanging Double-Sided Displays

Background

Costa Coffee is the UK’s largest coffeehouse chain, and the second largest in the world, with over 2,500 stores throughout the UK. Dubbed ‘The nations favourite coffee shop’ they are renowned for their range of coffee drinks as well as the warm and inviting atmosphere within their stores.

In 2019 Costa issued an invitation tender as part of a ‘Digital Transformation’ of its new and existing stores. Costa had used traditional signage for its menu and promotional posters but were looking to step into the future and go digital. Our partner came to us to help win the tender as Costa were looking for a unique digital signage solution for their window displays.

Challenges

Costa intended to install a digital signage screen in the window of each of their stores, but with the sheer quantity of screens needed, they had high demands for what they wanted. Costa were looking for a digital double-sided display to display static promotional imagery and motion video adverts to passers-by outside the store and various relevant promotions to customers inside the store. Traditionally, with such a large number of locations, whenever there was a new promotion, the logistics involved were time consuming and very costly to the company as it included printing costs and required someone physically going to each branch to change the signage. This process would be more efficient and cheaper with a digital solution. Costa already had a digital signage software partner so chosen solution would have to be able to run the Android based software.

One of the most important features that Costa demanded was the colour. As part of their corporate branding, they required the screen to be a very specific grey RAL colour. As this was part of the corporate identity it was essential that the screens enclosure was this exact colour.

As part of the tender, Costa specified that the solution needed to be commercial grade and suitable to operate 24/7 as window display. The screen facing outside needed to be bright enough to be seen in from outside. In terms of installation, Costa were looking to mount the screens from the ceiling, they did not want to lose any floor space or existing seating for the screens so the double-sided displays needed to be slim. The screens were going to be installed in a variety of buildings from new build drive-thrus to older high street stores, Costa could not know the ceiling condition of all of the ceilings in these places so to avoid any complicated issues during installation they wanted the screens to be as lightweight as possible.

For such a large project our partner was going to need to work with us closely to organise the project, Costa were not going to need all the screens at the same time and so needed a partner who could help regulate, manage and hold the stock for the project.

Solution

Working closely with our partner we suggested our 43” Hanging Double Sided Display for the project. As the name suggests, the screen is double-sided and we worked closely with the third-party software provider to ensure different content could display each side of the display without any issues.

The Hanging Double-Sided Displays come in a dazzling white colour, for their requirements and due to time restraints, we vinyl wrapped the first batch of screens their specific Costa grey colour. After the first batch were vinyl wrapped, we were able to powder coat the remaining screens at our factory so all the displays for the project were the colour that Costa specified.

The Hanging Double-Sided Displays are a full commercial grade solution, designed to run 24/7 without issues. The two sides of the display are 700cd/m² so are suitable to be used in a window. With a depth of just 21.6mm the Hanging Double Sided Displays are unbelievably slim; in fact, they are thinner than most single sided screens so all the displays for the project could be installed without having to lose any seats inside any of the stores. The screens are lightweight considering it is a double-sided screen, weighing less than 17kg, so there were to be no issues with the screen being too heavy. Costa decided to hang the displays with tension cables from the ceiling and from the bottom to secure the screens in place and reduce sway.

Results

Thanks to our past experience on large projects like this, we were able to work closely with our partner and Costa to manage the supply of stock for the project and ensure the screens were delivered on time for when they needed to be installed in batches of around 50 units each time. All the screens went through our strict quality control procedure at our UK warehouse including the installation and configuration of the software and content so the installation of the screens could be made as simple as possible.

The last of the 586 Hanging Double Sided Displays we made for this project were shipped out in November 2022 completing the ‘digital transformation’ of Costa stores. Now digital is at the heart of each store opening with a Hanging Double Sided Display required at each new store that opens. While the main project has successfully concluded with the main Costa stores, there is still potential with franchisees to further continue the rollout.

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