Dolce&Gabbana Displays Product in the Best Light
Thanks to Pixim Technology
A retail store is designed to be as welcoming as possible to customers while displaying the merchandise in the most appealing way. Large glass windows, glass display cases, wide aisles and other elements of the store design that help sell the product can make it more difficult to protect.
The average analog security camera can’t cope with bright sunlight streaming in the front windows or common reflections off a jewelry case. Analog CCD cameras can’t adjust to both highlights and shadows in the same scene—images are overexposed in bright areas and underexposed in dark areas. One of the worst case scenarios for a retail security director is to have a video recording of shoplifters, but not gain actionable images because the thieves are standing in the glare of a display case.
John Spirko, director of asset protection for high-end retailer Dolce&Gabbana, was determined to avoid this scenario for his stores. As the man responsible for protecting the retail outlets, he is always looking for ways to improve his video security systems. He has good reason to be motivated. With 116 stores and 17 factory outlets, he has a lot of unique and expensive merchandise to protect.
Established in 1985, Dolce&Gabbana is one of today’s leading international luxury goods groups. The two founders, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, are the creative and stylistic source of the two brands, Dolce&Gabbana and D&G. The Group designs, produces and distributes high-end clothing, leather goods, footwear, eyewear, fragrances, and accessories.
“Since our price points are very high,” explains Spirko, “we needed to drastically improve the viewing and recording of our stores’ activities. We had a number of challenges with some of our camera locations because of excessive glare and light issues due to our large front windows.” He turned to WG Security Products for advice.
WG is one of the leading suppliers of electronic security systems to the retail, commercial, and industrial marketplaces. The company's electronic article surveillance (EAS) products are used by retailers to deter shoplifting and internal theft. The company was established more then a decade ago in Asia and has steadily grown to maintain a strong worldwide presence.
John Harden, WG’s national account manager for the northeast region, provided several cameras for Spirko and his team to review. The choice quickly became obvious. Spirko selected the Clinton Electronics indoor color dome and box cameras powered by Pixim’s Digital Pixel System® technology. Unlike traditional image capture technologies, Pixim's patented technology empowers hundreds of thousands of pixels to act like individual cameras constantly self-adjusting. This all-digital system enables Pixim-powered cameras to efficiently capture the whole picture, regardless of lighting condition or application—thus securing the widest dynamic range, natural color, and clarity, while automatically eliminating image-compromising visual noise.
“I strongly recommended the cameras with Pixim’s chips inside,” says Harden, a 17- year security industry veteran. “In fact, I’ve been leading with Pixim-powered cameras to my retail clients, because I know the cameras will solve issues with glare and reflective light.”
Harden is also a strong proponent of Clinton Electronics. “WG has been working with Clinton extensively,” Harden explains. “Clinton has good pricing and great customer support. I will continue to recommend Clinton cameras powered by Pixim, because of their outstanding performance.”
Spirko agrees with Harden’s recommendations. “We were impressed by Clinton’s strong reputation of quality, and we discovered that the Pixim-powered cameras provided unsurpassed resolution. The wide dynamic range made possible through Pixim’s camera chips properly addressed our lighting issues enabling the video images produced by the Clinton cameras to be at the highest quality. Plus, the color in the images was natural and realistic.” Accurate color is critical in retail environments; you never want to mistake the suspect in the red shirt for the customer in the brown shirt.
Dolce&Gabbana’s flagship boutique on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills was selected as the first site for the new camera installations. The store’s loss prevention staff uses the cameras to observe current security concerns as well as review past incidents. In addition, the cameras are integrated into the store’s burglar alarm system and monitored when triggered by an alarm. This system ensures that the cameras record activity even when the store is closed.
Though the cameras were primarily installed for loss prevention, they also play an important role in managing day-to-day activities. The store manager utilizes the cameras to observe the activities of the sales team both on and off the sales floor, while the corporate office uses the cameras to remotely review compliance to merchandise presentation standards.
Pixim-powered cameras produce noise-free, clean images which require less hard drive space to store video content, saving Dolce&Gabbana costly recording space. The retailer’s asset protection team gains tremendous flexibility in how they can use that additional storage capacity to achieve optimum benefit from the security system. For instance, they can:
- Store additional hours of video per camera.
- Store higher-quality video for one or more cameras.
- Increase the video frame rate stored for one or more cameras.
- Use smaller, less-expensive hard drives and backup systems for video recording.
Dolce&Gabbana will add Clinton cameras to more stores each year. “I am ready to bring Pixim-powered cameras to all of our stores,” says Spirko. “With Clinton and Pixim, we are assured of getting high-quality video all of the time. This consistent quality maximizes our investment in our CCTV infrastructure.”
