First nCap, now nCapsule

Vested interest alert – my stuff is under the hood on this thing.

With that declared, I wanted to do a write-up on a very sexy new spin on a digital endcap, that grew out of the product that was launched by Toronto-based Artisan Complete a couple of months ago at GlobalShop, and generated a ton of attention.

The first nCap was a modular, re-skinnable endcap with a large embedded screen and interactive buttons. The nCapsule is a spinoff that removes the merchandising shelves and strips the look down to a sleek pillar.

This one was custom designed for the Concord luxury watch line, and was recently lit up at the Birk’s jewelry chain’s flagship store in Toronto. The Concord line is part of the Movado timepiece group, and the unit is meant to promote the value proposition of buying a watch that has a buncha zeroes after the dollar sign.

The unit is a slim aluminum slab with the screen and BroadSign-powered media player embedded, as well as a webcam that is sending images to CognoVision’s face counting software.

There are five little neon blue buttons below the screen, and the navigation is part of the attract loop media file.

Apart from my own selfish reasons for liking it, the nCapsule appeals because it gets the screen down to eye level, engages customers, has great content, and looks like a high-end fixture – not a screen hanging off a pole or stuck on a wall.

The face-tracking software is running off the same box driving the media, which is good news when it comes to budgeting this sort of thing.

The first unit is a test and a second one is in Milan.

Press release link