Responding to a decline in business due to the popularity of on-line shopping, outdoor clothing manufacturer Canada Goose has focused on creating an A/V retail experience rooted in storytelling for its outdoor wear. To bring this to life at its flagship location in Toronto’s Sherway Gardens Mall, Canada Goose called in LEA Professional.
LEA Professional was selected through local A/V and sound design integrator, Westbury National, one of Canada’s largest audiovisual integration and full-service event production companies.
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Canada Goose wanted an impactful environment, the experience is everything, and this store is unique. The customer can try on jackets for sizing then, with in-store Kiosks can purchase for home delivery,’ says Westbury National Programming Manager, Tim Bootes. ‘Customers are looking for the experience, they want to see something new and fun, and walk away with a good feeling. The store is unique because you are taken on a tour throughout the store; you are essentially guided down a wilderness path, indoors.’
Customers experience ‘the great outdoors’ via a theatrical A/V experience that includes navigating a creaking crevasse, rooms cooled to about 10°F – complete with real snow and ice – and an Elements Room supported by, 60ft-wide 4K video projections, all supported by sound reinforcement with amplifiers from LEA Professional.
‘With this installation, we needed to make sure we had great quality and that the audio and video matched perfectly,’ Bootes explains. ‘There are several different zones and sections within the store, and we need to make sure the audio wouldn’t spill out into another section. LEA amps help us control the audio.’
Bootes adds that the integrated DSP within the LEA amplifiers allows installers to fine-tune the audio according to each system installation’s design. ‘The LEA amplifier user interface is extremely intuitive,’ he says. ‘The fact that you can have multiple amplifiers in a system and you can easily tap between the amps just by logging into one is great.’
In addition to sound quality and reliability, Canada Goose required Westbury be able to monitor the systems remotely and proactively identify and address any problems if any occur before there was ever any impact to the customer experience. ‘LEA amps and the integrated remote access give us some great advantages; we’re able to monitor and adjust the audio settings directly, without using another device,’ Bootes says. ‘And LEA also allowed us to bring the Dante audio stream directly back from the playback processes, rather than needing another system.’
The LEA Dante Connect Series is the first professional amplifier family to feature Cloud connectivity, allowing integrators to harness the power of the Cloud for remote control, monitoring, notifications, and more from any personal device. It also allows the opportunity it creates recurring revenue stream for integrators.
‘When I had questions, LEA was super responsive, even after hours and on the weekend, so I was impressed by that,’ Bootes says. ‘It’s been several months since the installation, and we haven’t had any issues with the LEA amplifiers. I would definitely use them again for another project, and we are looking forward to the cloud platform being released for even greater remote monitoring and control.’
