In January 2020, NRF was hosted in New York City. Everyone involved in Retail and Commerce comes to this Big Show. From software to hardware, lots of technology is show cased. The technology company I work for was in the booth with Microsoft. Meanwhile, 15 minutes away, a group of us implemented all kinds innovative technology at Priority Bicycles in Tribeca. And we invited everyone at NRF to come visit and see for themselves. We demonstrated many things. Frictionless checkout using RFID tags integrated with Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Retail Point of Sale. Augmented reality with a 3D model of a bike. Remote Assist using Microsoft HoloLens. We also implemented Microsoft Teams and many more. We did not know at the time how important deploying Microsoft Teams at Priority Bicycles would become to help grow their business.
Pandemic And Microsoft Teams
When the pandemic hit, selling bicycles stopped. But then Priority Bicycles began using Microsoft Teams to schedule virtual visits with their customers. They would show the customers a bicycle using a webcam. Answer any questions they had. And continue to provide a personal experience. Through the use of Microsoft Teams, Priority Bicycles found a way to continue with their business and even grow their business. They could now reach out to people around the world and give them an excellent shopping experience. Microsoft Teams really saved their business and allowed them to drastically improve their ability to sell bicycles and connect with their customers.
The Wall Of Bikes
The story gets even a bit better, at least from my perspective. But first a little more background. One of the other pieces of innovative technology we added to Priority Bicycles store, is point of shelf lighting that can be controlled by a Power App. In the showroom, there is a wall of bicycles. Each of the bicycles hangs vertically on a bike rack. We installed an LED light stream behind each bicycle on the wall. These LED lights are controlled using a wireless Arduino. This microcontroller reads JSON messages from an Azure Service Bus running in the cloud. Through these messages, the lights can be controlled from anywhere in the world.
Customers are handed a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet, which runs a Microsoft Power App. They then can filter the catalog of bikes by categories. Such as brand, color, or type of bike. For example, if they were to select commuter bikes, the LED lights behind each commuter bike would light up. If they added a filter to only show blue bikes, only those bikes would show. The way this works is the Power App posts a JSON message to the Azure Service Bus. The Arduino would read this value and then send a message to turn on certain lights a certain color.
This technology allowed us to improve the customer shopping experience a little bit more. And bring in some of the same filters that shoppers online enjoy.
The Microsoft Teams Commercial
Fast forward to January 2021. Microsoft contacted Dave Weiner, the CEO of Priority Bicycles and asked if they could film a commercial. He agreed. In the commercial Microsoft highlighted how Priority Bicycles was able to use Microsoft Teams to save and accelerate their business. And use technology to adapt in the face of challenges. Also, as a point of pride, in the commercial you can see the point in shelf lighting that we installed. Microsoft had us turn on all of the lights for the commercial. Now you know that those lights are not just decoration. The commercial first aired during the NFL playoffs, during the Buccaneers vs. Packers Conference Championship game. Check out the Microsoft Commercial.
Conclusion
When we started working with Priority Bicycles and Dave Weiner, we did not know what all it would become. But as we progressed, we found more and more cool and innovative things we could do. And as more people become involved, they had their own ideas to make what we had started even better. It is amazing what great software, creative people, and a fantastic business can accomplish when they work together. As it says in the commercial: “Where there’s a team, there’s a way”.
