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Macy’s opts for LED with PixelFLEX install

Macy’s Brooklyn Downtown has become the latest retailer in the New York City borough to undergo a renovation project, with Reflect installing a new FLEXLite LED display from PixelFLEX to expand the store’s digital media offering.

“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 videowall composed of 55in LCD displays,” stated Chas Thornhill, CTS, 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.”

I was able to show them that we could bring in the LED wall at a little lower cost than the LCD.

Chas Thornhill, Reflect

Now with fully front-serviceable video panels, plus seamless right-angle corner capabilities, the FLEXLite NXG is one of the highest resolution LED video displays on the market. FLEXLite NXG tiles are calibrated directly out of the box to ensure colour and brightness in retail LED video environments.

“Macy’s has a few corporate owned LED displays, mostly in the Herald Square flagship store, so they weren’t completely unfamiliar with the technology, but they did have the idea it would be much more expensive over LCD,” continued Thornhill. “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.”

For this install, the new LED video display was placed on a concrete wall of the escalator well, between the first and second floors. Measuring 5m high by 2m wide, Thornhill developed a custom solution to attach the display to the actual concrete.

“The installation was pretty interesting in that in between the escalator wells there is a 2ft 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 authorised employee.”

With the install complete, the design team started sending content to the new display. “The content is mostly experiential and promotional with beauty shots of clothes models and graphical messages to promote sales and other store announcements,” added Thornhill. “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.”

www.pixelflexled.com