Established over a decade ago, Bogart Man has evolved from a simple Jeanswear store to one of South Africa's favourite men's retailers for designer urban chic and formal wear - incorporating a range of couture style suits, lounge shirts, and more.
There are now 12 Bogart Man stores in Gauteng. As the retailer looks to continually expand and open new stores, it is critical to maintain the attention to detail and high-style appeal of each store layout, as well as the presentation of sales staff.
With Bogart management required to spend time with designers and manufacturers around the world, and with a growing network of outlets, Bogart CEO Eli Saig turned to video technology to keep a close eye on the frontline environment and ensure the expanding Bogart brand is kept true to its essence.
Bogart Clothing was faced with the challenge of rolling out a video surveillance network across 13 sites, including 12 stores and one head office location, and connecting over 80 different cameras. However, the company needed to maintain costs by utilising its existing ADSL network infrastructure in each location, but without affecting the core business processes - such as e-mail, browsing, and certain hosted software packages.
Being forced to run the video feeds over a separate connection, such as another ADSL line or a Diginet ISDN line, for instance, would ramp up the costs. Depending on the size, each Bogart store has between four and eight cameras. Bogart's head office in Marlboro, Johannesburg, features another 30 cameras.
The retailer also wanted to capitalise on the latest generation of smartphones and tablets, and make the surveillance feeds available to its busy executive and management teams who inevitably spend much of their time travelling.
The solution was found in the SerVision suite of surveillance technology from Graphic Image Technologies (GIT). It included SerVision Digital Video Recorder (DVR) units at each store, combined with a free SerVision management console at head office, rendering multiple feeds and providing key functionalities. These feeds can also be monitored by management via mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, as well as on their PCs and laptops.
These benefits were made possible by the SerVision system's advanced compression technology, says Mark Chertkow, Managing Director at Graphic Image Technologies. "With this unique compression technology, video feeds can be streamed with just eight Kilobits per second (Kbps) of bandwidth," he explains, making it perfect in almost any South African environment.
"So in Bogart's case, its standard ADSL lines were easily capable of handling multiple video feeds while not impacting on other business functions."
Added to this, the compression means that on the receiver side, the videos can be displayed on smartphones and tablets that are connected via 3G or even EDGE quality connectivity. The compression also means that more video can be stored on the DVR units, and in this case, three weeks of recordings are stored by Bogart at each store using hard drives as small as 160 Gigabits (Gb).
"This system gives us a sense of control over the business which we've never had before," says Saig. "Considering we are a high-end clothing retailer, it is important for me to see how my staff are dressing, how they are presenting themselves, and how they are interacting with the customers."
Through their own sense of style, the staff delivers the Bogart brand promise of providing striking, quality clothing for discerning buyers.
Saig believes through the increased sales generated by a more motivated, more engaged sales team, and cost savings from reduced instances of theft, the value of the SerVision system is easily worth "hundreds of thousands of rands" each month.
Using SerVision technology means that any analogue camera can be connected to the network - from basic low-cost units, to high-end cameras offering rich features like light filters that adjust for changing conditions.
Graphic Image Technologies also provides ongoing enhancement in the form of regular firmware updates, based on consumer feedback, often free of charge. Currently, the main features include capturing still shots, and recording sections in real-time (instead of having to go back into the history files later).
Finally, the SerVision system also holds the potential to be tightly integrated with the Bogart security systems, notes Chertkow. This would allow for innovations like relevant video feeds automatically appearing on the management console and mobile devices when security alarms are triggered, and motion detection technology that contributes to the rapid alert and ongoing recording of any incidents.
Share