After seven years of refining their operations, Eyecom have emerged as one of the continent’s leading LED specialists – manufacturing, installing, repairing, servicing and conducting sales from their headquarters in Cape Town, South Africa.

AV Integration caught up with Eyecom owner, Paul Bowling, to discuss the company’s unique business model, its involvement in the new Fourways Mall redevelopment project, the current market desire for LED in the retail sector and where this technology is headed in the near future.

LOCAL EDGE

As Paul Bowling explains: “Eyecom originally did installations and servicing of LED displays, but in the last four years we’ve decided to manufacture our own displays in South Africa. We looked at what the African market specifically needed, and instead of just importing LED displays like everybody else does, we just import the LED modules – which are flown in. This speeds up the response time and means we can build displays to custom-made sizes.”

As Bowling outlines, this unique approach to servicing the LED industry can lead to significant savings: “Usually, a client makes the enquiry and confirms the order. The supplier would then request a minimum of 50% deposit, because China always needs 100% payment. The order would then be placed in China, they would manufacture the screen and then it would probably be put in a container and shipped to South Africa – so about four or five weeks later, the displays arrive. But a supporting frame still needs to be manufactured, probably locally, and only then would you be able to do your installation.

“That’s a turnaround time of six to eight weeks, at the quickest. Meanwhile, our standard turnaround time is 10 days. We are much more responsive, and we hold stock in country – combined with our unique design this has resulted in a cheaper, more lightweight screen for the market.”

FOURWAYS IN FOCUS

Bowling, whose career in LED started nearly 20 years ago in the UK, sums up the Eyecom approach as follows: “We have tried to build a turnkey business: everything to do with LEDs, and nothing more.”

Having been involved in projects as varied as control rooms, board rooms, universities, casinos, petrol stations and food courts all over Africa – including the continent’s biggest-ever single digital rollout and the massive 224sqm Media24 building screen – he explains how the recent Fourways Mall redevelopment project came to benefit from Eyecom technologies.
“We supply a lot of integrators, and many have recently moved from the LCD to the LED industry. Those integrators have relationships with the end users, these include retailer and OOHA and others. So, in total, just for the Fourways Mall project, we manufactured 15 displays for a food and cloth brand, one curved display for Super Dry, one landscape display for Jeep, Forever New and Armani, (Integrator Solved technology hub) two column displays, and then four and seven displays for two other retailers, respectively. These 32 displays were all manufactured and dispatched within one month.”

Asked whether there were any design challenges encountered during the process, Bowling says: “There were no problems whatsoever. You work with the interior designers for these retailers and get a clear idea of the specifications, one of the retailers took an assortment of display sizes. On their lift carousel, they’ve got six displays each measuring 6.5m high by 2m wide. These were built in two pieces, because we wanted to simplify the installation as much as possible. The technical requirements for those displays are, simply, to connect the power to the top half and bottom half, connect the data to the same, and then plug it into your power outlet.

“This simplified approach is a core aspect of what we do. Because, for us, this means – as LED experts – we don’t have to do every single installation. It encourages integrators to move to LED from LCD because they’re not scared of the technology; they know they can install it. And when a designer says I need a screen of X size, we can build it to that specification and still retain the ease of installation you get from standard-size displays. We’ve done a screen that measured 640mm by two metres – we can really cater for every design.”

LED BOOM

After manufacturing about 60 Eyecom displays in 2017, this number jumped to over 100 last year and the 2019 figures are well on course to surpass 200. Bowling confirms that this does seem to be a boom time for the LED industry, and shares some thoughts about possible reasons for this growth.

“We have found that a lot of integrators have moved from LCD to LED technology,” he says. “Our displays come pre-cabled and pre-configured and so installation is as easy as hanging the screen – you don’t need to be an LED technician. This increased ease of installation has certainly been a factor from our side.

“LED has come down in price,” he continues. “Three years ago we did a 3 big installation for a client on a six millimetre screen – and now we’ve just supplied them for another 2 displays, this time our four millimetre model, a higher resolution screen, and the price is the same.

“But,” he says, “the push has really come from the brands – this sense, from their point of view, that they have to be digital and cutting-edge. The old LCD technology has a lot of physical restraints: the physical size you can build, for example, the lifespan of the screen, the cost – because at the professional level, LCDs are now more expensive than LED. To give an example, one retailer was using a three LCD monitor by three LCD monitor configuration to build a wall. We can now produce that same size screen in LED – not only cheaper, but we can be a lot of more creative because we’re working with modules which are only 320 by 160mm, and so we can make a mosaic configuration if required. The latest LEDs also use less power – and, if one module fails, we only have to repair that one component. With LCD if one display of nine fails, then the whole wall essentially fails because you can’t leave the display running with one screen off, and you can’t fully recalibrate the wall so that the colours remain true.”

Bowling’s final point is a fascinating insight into the pace of technological evolution in the LED industry: “Most retail contracts or store designs typically last two or three years. To see a return on investment, you therefore need to view LED technology as a consumable item. They’re not designed to last forever anymore. There’s no point in investing huge sums of money now in a 6mm screen that guarantees you a 10-year lifespan; in just a few years, everybody else will be installing 1mm displays and you will be left behind with ‘old technology’ before you’ve even paid your costs.
“That’s why another core component of our business model is our three-year, worry-free warrantee. Our displays come with spare parts and so if there’s a problem the technician can easily switch it out and avoid any downtime. That faulty part is then sent back to us and in three or four days, usually, it’s repaired – to the same standard than if it had been sent to China, which takes about three or four weeks, plus extra costs on transport and duties.”

ANALYTICS AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Although Bowling is adamant that Eyecom is “in the right place, at the right time, with the right technology”, this does not mean that the company is content to rest on its laurels, however. He describes some interesting innovations that will soon be integrated into Eyecom LED displays.
“One route we are currently developing is the audience tracking component of our LED displays. This means that the screen itself can give some accountability for its presence – Am I doing my job? Are people looking at me? Is the content relevant? – and advertisers and brands can actually see that the screen is reaching the audience they want to reach.
“With these innovations, we will be able to provide data indicating that people are looking at the screen for X period of time; the technology can also tell you basic demographic information about the audience, as well as their facial response to the screen – did they smile? Or frown? For how long did they linger in front of the screen? The interface for this is basically a webcam; it’s the technology in the background that runs all of these analytics.

“We now feel like we’ve refined the technology for the physical screen – it’s user-friendly, it’s supportable for the African market, it’s easy to install,” Bowling concludes. “The next step is our displays being monitored from a remote location and adding that performance accountability and analytics value to advertisers. We want to know that all of our displays are representing Eyecom to their full potential at all times.”