As Macy’s Brooklyn Downtown began a renovation journey, it wanted to expand its digital media to enhance the consumer experience, so it enlisted longtime partner Reflect, which installed a new FLEXLite NXG 3.9mm LED video display from PixelFLEX.
“Looking to add digital media to the new Brooklyn store design, the executives at Macy’s brought us on early in the project where they were originally concepting a large video wall composed of 55in. LCD displays,” said Chas Thornhill, Reflect’s senior systems engineer. “I took one look at that and immediately started working to change the design from LCD to LED. In the end, we were successful in proving that LED would look better while being more cost-effective when considering the full installation and maintenance costs, and the FLEXLite NXG looks great in the new space.”
Macy’s wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the technology, but Thornill says it had the idea it would be more expensive compared to LCD. “Using the entirety of the project cost, including installation, maintenance, and content creation, I was able to show them that we could bring in the LED wall at a little lower cost than the LCD.”
The new display would be placed on a concrete wall of the escalator well, between the first and second floors. Measuring five meters high by two meters wide, Reflect had to determine how to best attach the display to the concrete. In the end, Thornhill developed a custom solution.
“The installation was pretty interesting in that in between the escalator wells there is a two-foot thick, 3000 psi concrete sheer wall that runs from the basement all the way to the top of the building,” explained Thornhill. “We wanted to hold the LED wall as close to the concrete as possible, so I designed a custom bracket that we fabricated here in New York, and then attached it to the concrete wall. We then attached the top row of the FLEXLite NXG LED tiles to the bracket and hung the remaining panels from the top row. When we got the bottom, we attached a couple of bolts to tabs so that the LED wall couldn’t be swung out without an authorized employee.”
With the install complete, the design team was ready to start sending content to the new display which would use the proprietary ReflectView system for digital content management that is standard across all Macy’s locations.
“The content is mostly experiential and promotional, with beauty shots of clothes models and graphical messages to promote sales and other store announcements,” Thornhill said. “The signal is provided by our ReflectView system, which Macy’s adopted a few years ago to drive digital content to all their locations. We then have an IDF room on the floor above the LED wall with the ReflectView media player and PixelFLEX sending unit, and the entire system is powered from only three 20A power circuits.”
