Yale Smart Shop

Still Pioneering for Nearly 180 Years

With roots in colonial America dating back to the 1840’s, Yale is one of the oldest international brands in the world and probably the most recognized name in the locking industry. In fact, Yale’s 180-year history includes major breakthrough innovations that have marked the evolution not only of Yale, but of the entire locking industry. ASSA ABLOY Group—the global leader in access solutions— acquired the brand Yale in 2000, and since then has been an important part of advancing its door opening solutions. Their product and service offerings include locks, doors, gates and entrance automation solutions.

Smart Then, Smarter Today

As the locking industry has been disrupted with new solutions such as digital locks, smart door locks and door viewers with IP cameras, ASSA ABLOY also changed the way they market their new Yale brand innovations. Traditionally, their mechanical locks were sold through distributors in customary locksmith shops which were usually not “dedicated” shops, with most of them being small in size, and mixed with other services such as shoe repair and other offerings.

ASSA ABLOY launched an ambitious plan to revolutionize how they sell their digital security lock solutions. Currently, there are eight direct stores that serve as their “flagship stores” in Asia. Their goal is to have franchisee stores across the region, with a large number by 2021, of which half will be in China.

In December 2018, the ASSA ABLOY Singapore team established its first Yale Smart Shop to build a direct connection with shoppers. Recognizing the need for a new way to promote awareness of the shop, the APAC branding and marketing team conceptualized and launched a targeted campaign. Entitled #takeiteasy with Yale, the campaign was designed to convey the message that Yale’s smart home products offer shoppers convenience and peace of mind.

The debut of their first Yale Smart Shop in Singapore marks the first time of going direct with physical stores. As a result, they needed a highly accurate traffic counting solution with advanced analytics to help make better informed decisions in this new smart store concept, upgrading its Yale brand experience with an engaging store activation campaign that taps into the tech-savvy trends of shoppers, creating an interactive experience with augmented reality.

Through these interactions, the participants gained first-hand experience and an understanding of the benefits of how Yale can “smartly” protect their homes and provide them with a worry-free environment.

In this new Yale 100% experiential retail smart store all sales are done online. There is no point of sale (POS), no cash, no float and no inventory. After each visit, a store staff member will ask the customer to sign up a free e-shop account. The store’s ID is tied to the customer’s account for attribution of sales. This groundbreaking store concept requires traffic data to help Yale management with the following challenges:

• Gain insights from the data to measure the performance of their direct stores in the initial launch phase
• Use the data as benchmark/reference information over time for the purpose of recruiting, measuring, and managing franchisees in the second phase
• Leverage traffic data to compare different store formats and those of same format in the future (i.e., pop-up stores vs. stores facing main roads vs. stores in malls) for that type of analysis

To overcome the challenges of its Yale Smart Shop in Singapore, ASSA ABLOY chose the ShopperTrak brand of Traffic Insights to better engage with customers, boost conversion rates, align staffing with traffic patterns, and improve both operational and marketing effectiveness to ultimately have a positive impact on sales.

Additional benefits of using the ShopperTrak traffic analytics solution include:

• Insight into power hours in order to optimize staffing. For instance, they can allocate more sales associates on the weekend (three versus two on weekdays) to adequately handle the traffic volume and better serve customers
• Gain awareness of peak hours, basically, one hour before and after lunch and dinner on weekdays in order to further allow more accurate scheduling of staff
• Use of geo-targeting Facebook ads from time to time (during peak hours) to attract crowds around the store vicinity. Traffic data allows Yale management to benchmark and compare against same time periods (for example normal Friday lunchtime) to measure advertising effectiveness

In order to scale up to the extent they intend to, the Yale Smart Shop traffic data will act as a scientific and credible data source to attract and retain franchisees. A big advantage to having accurate traffic insights will be the ability to align staff scheduling with peak traffic periods and power hours. With these insights, they will be able to measure and (in the future) know who has visited, who purchased (conversion percentage) and how much they bought (transaction size).

Implementation of the ShopperTrak traffic counting solution in the Yale Smart Shop will enhance management’s ability to make data driven decisions in all areas of the business from marketing campaigns to managing staff schedules. With actionable traffic data, ASSA ABLOY now has the power to unlock better store performance in their revolutionary Yale Smart Shop to satisfy today’s new way of shopping.

Click here to download a copy of the Yale Smart Shop case study

Sensormatic Solutions is a global leader in enabling smart and connected shopper engagement. By combining critical insights into retail inventory, shopper traffic and loss prevention, Sensormatic Solutions powers operational excellence at scale and helps create unique shopping experiences. Our solutions deliver real-time visibility and predictive analytics for accurate decision-making across the enterprise, enabling retailers to confidently move into the future. With more than 1.5 million data collection devices in the retail marketplace, we capture 40 billion shopper visits and track and protect billions of items each year. Our retail portfolio features the premier Sensormatic^®, ShopperTrak^® and TrueVUE™ brands.

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