Retailer relies on Stratacache tech to monitor customer count

Dayton innovator comes through in era of social distancing

A grocery chain in Australia is relying on technology from a Dayton-based company to help monitor how crowded its stores are in this era of social distancing.

A recent story in the Brisbane Times tells how a Woolworths supermarket is working with global digital technology company Stratacache and analytics firm Walkbase to implement the technology.

The idea is simple: Deploy three-dimensional cameras at the entrance and exit of stores to track the movement of shoppers, as writer Dominic Powell described the set-up.

“But instead of a standard video stream, the cameras will convert humans into “blurred spherical shapes” – also known as ‘blobs,’" Powell wrote in the story this week. “Their mission: prevent having too many blobs in the store in order to maintain social distancing.”

(An aside: The Woolworths in Australia really has no affiliation with the company of the same name in the United States.)

Based in downtown Dayton, Stratacache specializes in digital signs and software for customer-facing displays, as well as array of other technology customers-focused businesses find useful. The company is big with Pacific Rim customers in dining, banking and retail.

Walkbase is a Stratacache-owned retail analytics firm and product. The Dayton company last month announced an expanded partnership with Texan grocery retailer H-E-B to use Walkbase to get data on the customer-shopping experience.

Chris Riegel, Stratacache founder and chief executive, said the neat thing about Walkbase is that it tracks customers but it does not uniquely identify them, answering privacy concerns -- hence, Powell’s “blobs.”

The Walkbase technology is being tested with large customers close to and in Ohio, one in the home improvement industry, another in groceries, Riegel said. Unfortunately, he said he was not permitted to identify them.

“Using sensor-based insights gathered from Stratacache’s Walkbase solution, H-E-B gains a richer understanding of the service level in their stores, and will use the actionable data to advance many aspects of the in-store shopping experience,” the Dayton company said in an Aug. 20 release on the partnership with that grocery chain.

H-E-B has more than 400 stores in Texas and Mexico.

Stratacache has about 255 customers in the Dayton area these days. The company has about 1,100 employees globally.

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