Colin:

...the antitrust police. So the objectives and the scope of this group is around sharing best technologies. We've just seen this thing that we will record this. Some people have said they can't make it, so they've asked for a recording. Here's Chris from CVS. We are very grateful for the support from all these organizations who are attending and have attended these meetings in the past. So we do tend to get great support. We have our academic advisor, Professor Adrian Beck, as well as research grant providers, Checkpoint, Genetec, Retail Insight, and RGIS, who occasionally attend these calls just to hear what's hot with retailers and inform their innovation journey. Our approach is if you've been on these calls before, it's very much around engaging, sharing, collaborating, and then innovating. So we really do try to encourage that sort of process. And so after the presentation, what will happen is we'll have a discussion facilitated by myself and Adrian Beck on the findings.

So this is one of many this year. So it actually says November, it should be November the 11th. And so we're looking at parking lots. But just a preview, we are heading for the one on December the eighth, which is our final one where we're looking at the future of video. We've got these beautiful gentlemen who will be presenting and answering questions and providing their thoughts on where the future video. So we've got the CEO of Genetec, which is Pierre, and Martin, who is the CEO of Axis. And they're going to start to address some of these questions here around where is the cloud going to take us? Where is the strategy? Do they see in terms of functional ownership? Will this change over time from security to IT? Thoughts and again, ideas around business intelligence. What will be the adoption of this?

We've talked about it for a long while. Integration and the further growth towards step towards physical IOT and video analytics on the floor. So those are some of the things that we will discuss in our December the eighth meeting. But let's take us back to today's discussion and look at this, which is the whole idea of how do you protect parking lots to grow sales and to protect the customers. So that was my sort of quick introduction. We've got a presentation from Mike Lamb who will introduce himself to those who you are not familiar with him, and then we'll have an open discussion. But before that, Adrian wanted just to do these couple of slides just to set it all up. So Adrian, were you able to share your thoughts of these two slides as we set up Mike to present his slides?

‍Adrian:

Yes. Thank you Colin. Good afternoon everybody. Yeah, I just thought just in terms of providing some overall context and framework for what we're going to discuss this afternoon, as many of you may have seen in the report I did earlier, I developed this wheel of uses for CCTV when you know we're asking the critical question of people who'd invested in video technologies, what is it for? And I was able to boil it down into these eight key areas that people typically use video technology for in their retail organizations around deter, review, respond, inform, comply, reassure, identify, and alert and monitor. And I went through in the report and looked at what those look like. And so if you go to the next slide, I thought what might be useful in terms of thinking about what Mike is about to present is really just to reflect upon three components of this.

And this is really, I think, applicable for any video intervention that you may be thinking about, which is, first of all, what is the video technology claiming to do? Where would it tick boxes around the video wheel in terms of what it's claiming to deliver? Is it saying it's going to deliver deterrence? Is it going to give you the capacity to review and so on? So I think that's the first thing we can think about as Mike presents, which is what does it claim to do? The second one then is to really do a bit of a deeper dive and say, well, if it's claiming to do these things well, how does it do it in terms of something like deterrence, for instance? What are the ways in which that technology will actually deliver deterrence on the ground? How will an offender be affected and therefore deterred because of the presence or the way that this technology works?

So it'd be worth thinking and reflecting as we go along. What is it claiming to do, but critically, how on earth does it actually deliver that? And then I think just the third piece of analysis we can think about as we go through this session is, well, what's different about what this intervention is claiming to do compared with other forms of video technologies? What is unique in terms of any of these areas that it's delivering that couldn't be done with something else? So I think that would just perhaps Colin gives us an overarching framework to think about and to perhaps to structure our discussions once we've heard from Mike on this particular intervention.

Colin:

Okay, thank you very much. Well, Mike, do you want to put up your slides as we did in rehearsals and put them on the screen and then take us through your presentation?

Mike Lamb:

Absolutely. Let me get squared away here.

Colin:

Christine Kristen from Target, welcome. Iona, welcome from Boots. Jim from our friends at our Hotel Hayes, welcome to you. And I think those are your slides, Mike, so it's over to you.

Mike Lamb:

Very good, thank you. And good afternoon to those of you across the pond. Good morning to those of you on the other side. First of all, it's a privilege to be able to get on and still discuss an industry that's so enjoyed over the course of 42 years. Colin and Adrian and I have had several conversations about how do we present something here that would add value, at least present probing questions as to whether or not the technology might be applicable in your respective retail shop. Just a little context before I do a little bit more introduction on my background is this dates back across at least two organizations that I supported, this being the notion of camera towers. Joel Braswell, who I think is on from Walmart, his team was responsible at Walmart among other things I'm sure today. But one among them was camera technology and how did we deploy it in such a way at Walmart that it brought optimum value?

And we were having a series of incidents of purse snatchings and basically crimes in parking lot that was having a detrimental impact on the business. And from there we said, well look, let's see if we can put a camera on a pole and better not only observe but deter this activity. So as Joel and the team did the head scratching, it's like, well, we got to trench a line out there. We got to make sure structurally the pole will support the type of camera we want, particularly if we want bells and whistles. So we migrated from that to saying, well, what if we had a camera tower out there? What if we had something more portable? What if we had something that did not require all of that effort, if you will? And then obviously there's other advantages that we'll talk about during the presentation.

So that was the genesis, at least for me. And the introduction to the tower concept itself. So I had a great team at Walmart and we had a lot of support in rolling it out and we had success there. And so that obviously carried over from my days at Walmart. We certainly didn't pioneer the tower. I'm sure there were perhaps other retailers using it, but we felt like there was a need. And thus, that's a little bit of the history of how it started. I know most folks on this call, but I don't know everyone. So I'll just briefly cover my background and you can tell by the look on my face that I've been at it a while before my retirement, but around 42 years of experience in this industry between loss prevention, safety and security. I retired more recently from the Kroger company back in November of last year, and it's remarkable just how quickly a year goes by.

But as you see there, I had the privilege of leading teams at home Depot and then Walmart US. And then finally, as I sunset my career with Kroger, I won't bore you with the detail, but I do enjoy staying active, serving a number of committees, the Loss Prevention Foundation's executive committee, RILA and their efforts, the NASP Group, the National Association of Shoplifting Prevention, which really focuses on education for low-level offenders versus prosecution. And then Jim Lee's LP Magazine that a lot of folks probably on this call are contributing to on a regular basis. And then I support the Loss Prevention Research Council. So just a little background of where I've been, where I'm at now is, consulting almost sounds like a bad word you, I'd like to think that the work I'm doing now keeps me really engaged in an industry that is so near and dear to me, but at my own pace and at my own speed.

And there's organizations that I serve not so much in, let me try to sell the product, but serving as maybe the practitioner. On the other side of the desk, so when these folks go to market, they perhaps better understand what a retailer is facing today and some of the needs. And so I'm very privileged to support these six organizations that I truly believe offer value to the industry, and I'm trying the best I can to support the growth of that value. One among them is LiveView Technologies, which as Kevin Larson over at Kroger, and Tom seated next to me can attest is the group that we used extensively on these towers. And we'll talk about that here in just a moment. But that's a little bit about where I have been and it's a little bit more about where I'm at today. Just to give you some context and background, I'm preaching to the choir here.

This is probably a slide if you're more outside of the world of AP. But I can tell you up to and during my final days at Kroger, if you looked at the cornerstones of what you were trying to protect, one, it was people, your most precious asset. So safety and security of both associates and customers. We know that reduction of crime equals reduction in shrink. So reducing crime and not just within the four walls of the store but within the proximity of the store is important. And then I've never been around a C-suite that didn't have a conversation that evolved around how do you elevate and grow the customer experience and the perception that your customer has of your business and the brand loyalty that separates the winners from the not so great winners in this space.

And I think towers represent a step in that direction, and I think they support all three of these. And I would advocate, and perhaps most of you would agree, no singular solution is the silver bullet. It is perhaps a cluster of things you're doing program-wise and otherwise. But to me, current retail challenges are these things. And reduction of crime in many respects, at least from my perspective, is the habitual operator, the ERC rings that are taking the big chunks out of the profitability in companies.

So car park parking liability, why is it important? And I guess this is a statement of the obvious, but no associate wants to come to work and park in a parking lot or an area that they feel unsafe. And certainly customers will opt to go somewhere else if they feel as though that there's a parking lot or that demographic is not safe for them. And I think by doing that, it mitigates this risk and it drives more brand loyalty and improves the customer experience. And what we learned at Kroger, and it's not a scientific study, it's not an Adrian Beck quality study, but what we learned is, and again, a more statement of the obvious, but if bad stuff's happening in the parking lot, it's a great probability it's carrying over into the store. And then by virtue of improving parking lot liability through whatever means you deploy, you improve shareholder value and you drive profitability.

And I won't name the company, but I'm familiar with an organization that a retired Navy veteran, I think he was a decorated Navy veteran shopping in the store and went to his vehicle only to be held up at gunpoint, shot left for dead and stole his vehicle. And this location had guards. Now, there was not a guard in the parking lot at the time, but they deployed guards. And we all know the guarding business is a very difficult one, but he was left to paraplegic, was in critical condition for weeks, and his quality of life was destroyed. So as you might expect, they filed a suit against this organization and the court awarded this individual, I think it was $62 million.

Now the retailer has appealed that verdict, and I don't know where that stands today, but the whole point is the appeal. The whole point is the liability there is enormous. One might argue particularly the tort attorneys had there been in this store, a camera tower, you could say, well, camera towers don't take a day off. They operate, if they're operating efficiently, 24 seven. So again, just to underscore the risk in the parking lot, but I don't think this audience needs to hear that, I think you already know that. But I thought I'd share that real world story with you.

We use the term a lot at Walmart in my Walmart days and in my Kroger days, and I'm sure I plagiarized it from somebody perhaps Target, but impression of control and how do you go to market in such a way that you harden the target, as we used to say at Kroger, a lot against criminal activity, whether it's occurring in the parking lot or whether it's occurring within the store. And you see on the left here on the slide, a still shot of these towers. Many of you have seen them, maybe some of you have not. But there are other imposing, I mean they take up an entire parking spot. You see the number of cameras that are positioned at the top of the tower and there's a blinking light. So it is designed to be very obtrusive in a sense that you see it, you get it, and hopefully if it's successful for you, the bad guy fears it.

And then again, capabilities of towers, and I'd mentioned this, one, they're very overt or auspicious, they're not inauspicious. It creates that strong presence that perhaps in the absence of just having a camera on a pole or somewhere else, you're not going to get that advantage. It has capabilities. If the customer wants to leverage those to create autonomous alerts, they are AI triggered. You see a framework here where there's a area of concern for this retailer and it's cordoned off and there's certain hours by which or exception timeframes by which if there's motion or activity within that area, it's going to trigger an alert. Alerts may mean nothing if there's no one to monitor it. I can tell you at Kroger we had every single tower attached or monitored through the proprietary alarm station out in Portland Oregon. But you have to manage, in my opinion, all these alerts by exception because otherwise you get so desensitized to a lot of the activity that may be occurring.

So capabilities of towers, in my humble opinion, are the three things you see here. You see them if they are oriented in such a way that you're leveraging all the capacities, they do what a lot of other cameras do. And then if you have the ability to have human response, then you even further optimize, in my opinion, their value human response. Let me see if I can get this bad boy to load here. I'm going to give you a little background here. I don't think my audio will play. I don't even know who this retailer is. This video was provided to me by the LiveView folks. And what you'll see when the video rolls and hopefully it will, is this is like a drug deal gone bad. You see these young individuals, most likely in their teens if early twenties. You see in the steel shot, the one on the left, he is holding an assault rifle. So there's some bad stuff about to happen. Let me see if I've got enough brains to get this to present for you. Can you guys see the video now off the slide and kind of just.

Colin:

No, I don't think we can't. I think what we're seeing is, do we still see this? You'd have to-

Mike Lamb:

Well hold on. Here we go. You have video moving now. Or we can't see it.

Colin:

If they are, they're moving very slowly, but you have to switch the view. So you have to go to the arrow at the top and show.

Mike Lamb:

I'll let Tom or Ricky drive. He's forgotten more than I'll let her know. I want to take the time to try to get this video in front of you because I think it underscores.

Colin:

Yeah, Tom's on the case.

Mike Lamb:

Crack the code there, Thomas.

Colin:

Let's get this real quick. There you go.

Mike Lamb:

Can you see it now?

Colin:

Yep.

Mike Lamb:

Oh, excellent.

Tom:

Now hit play.

Mike Lamb:

All right, so we should have volume, but unfortunately we don't. Right about the time these kids start to throw down, there's a voice down. I think this organization has a third-party monitoring that says, please leave the premises immediately. Law enforcement has been notified, something to that effect. And they all jump on their cars and off they go. I would argue in this scenario, and Tom made this comment to me yesterday, people get used to seeing things even towers. And you might say, well Mike, if there's a tower in there, why in the heck did they even roll up and attempt this activity? You are arguing that they ought to be able to see it. Perhaps they saw it, but they didn't fear it until a voice down came and reacted in a way that arguably, in my opinion, saved lives. So I thought I would share that with you just to illustrate this one example. Now how do I get out of this mess, Tom?

‍Tom:

unshare it. And then you're going to have to reshare your card.

Mike Lamb:

Where were we? Right here. All right, back to normal. At least as normal as I can be. So anyway, human response is, I think the key, and the other thing about this technology, if you choose to do so, is you can monitor it from either your desktop, so you can patch in off your desktop or even your mobile device, your phone, and pull up any given store if you have the authorization and the viewing rights to do so. That's more, in my opinion, as an executive kind of dog and pony. I could be in a meeting in Cincinnati Ohio and show it to a senior operator to say, look, we care about safety in the parking lot. We care about shrink and profitability. Here are some of the technologies we're deploying to help mitigate those risks.

It has the ability to deploy license plate recognition, which again, if you think about ORC, if you think about sort of this interconnected ecosystem of solutions, one might argue that you get further optimization by having that advantage. I have been told, and perhaps Joel or Kevin or Tom may have more detail here, that you can also uniquely identify vehicles by color. Maybe that's got damaged to the right front quarter panel and you can load exceptions in by which it would pick up that activity and then present alerting. Is that an accurate statement?

Tom:

I've not seen that in practice, but it is something we've asked for. Instead of facial recognition, feature recognition on a vehicle. I don't know if Joel's seen that, but I haven't seen that in play yet.

Mike Lamb:

Yeah, and I would also say to Joel and Kevin in particular, if there's other things here feature-wise that I'm missing, please as I move through the presentation, please add any color commentary. I thought I'd show you this picture because it's a home improvement center. There's an orange one and there's a blue one. But for the purpose of just-

‍Colin:

Mike, the orange one's on the call, so be rude about the blue one. You could be rude about the blue one, the orange one's on the call.

Mike Lamb:

The orange one's on the call.

Colin:

Yeah.

Mike Lamb:

Oh, I see. Okay. But what's notable here, if you look at this picture, is look at the number of vehicles parked under the tower and open spots closer to the entrance that are left vacant. And I think it just underscores that people feel comfortable with a tower in the lot, and it presents this element of safety and security, albeit real or arguably as real as you would think it would be in such a way that I think says, okay, this is perhaps different than a light on a pole. Because a light on a pole perhaps, well, you wouldn't see it as readily. And again, this one, it takes up an entire space. And most are designed, there's a number of manufacturers of these. Most are designed very similarly. And obviously you see the big solar panels, and we'll talk about what that does and some of the challenges around it. But again, I thought I'd share this picture to illustrate that. It's interesting, a bunch of cars parked underneath it.

Tom:

Can I tell a story about this?

Mike Lamb:

Yep.

Tom:

So it was interesting, and Joel, you might've been down there with me, but when we first deployed one of these, we happen to be in one of the Walmart parking lots. And while we were looking at the device, a young lady drove up, parked right underneath it, and the individuals we were with asked her said, "Hey, just out of curiosity, why did you pick this parking spot right here to park?" And she goes, "Because of this thing." She had a Honda Accord, which at that time I think was one of the number one cars stolen in the United States. And she said, "Because of this thing, because I know nobody's going to mess with my car if I park here. And if they do, you guys will have video of it." And so even the customers intuitively know that this is a good place for them to park their cars if they're worried about somebody breaking in. And that to me stuck out in early days while we were trying to understand the viability of the product.

Mike Lamb:

Thanks Tom. And as you can see on the text on the slide, you can trigger this via video analytics depending on the capabilities of the cameras that you deploy. It will, when triggered, produce floodlight, flashing lights. You can customize messages in terms of talk down on it. Those can be live if you're connected to a monitoring area, and as we talked about, there is both desktop and mobile phone access and alerting. And there was a question, and maybe I get to it here in a slide about vandalism. Are folks defacing these things or attempting to damage them? Kevin, I'll put you on a spot or Tom over at Kruger.

I don't know that we had very few, if any incidents of folks trying to deface them or disarm them or damage them. And there is a feature, as I understand it, by which if you are attempting to let's say remove it or damage it, you got a hammer you're trying to hit on it will actually voice down to protect itself, right? There's some customized voice down for that purpose. But I think by its very nature, if folks are going to try to destroy it, then they don't fear it. So this whole notion of somebody's watching, I'm going to stay away from it with ill intentions, it kind of holds true.

‍Tom:

I think Joel and Jatine would know of a few incidents over at Walmart where I remember one guy threw a big rock at the solar panel. It seemed like a homeless individual that probably had some other issues as well. And then we did have an individual try and take one, and his story was pretty unique. Obviously that activity was noted and the police were called. And when the police asked him what he was doing while he was trying to hook that thing up to his car. He said he thought his wife was cheating on him and he needed some video capability, so he was going to try and steal our tower. But for the most part, at Kroger, we haven't had any incidents with vandalism or anything else, but I know there was a couple incidents. Heck, we had one hit by a drunk driver too in the parking lot back in the day. And Jatine, I don't know if there's been anything since that you want to add in on that or Joel, but that's kind what I remember.

Jatine:

I know very little after that, just one or two incidents here and there, but accidents more than intentional.

Mike Lamb:

Another point worth making here is, and we were doing this at Walmart, and I think it continues today at Kroger, is put a sticker on there that looks police-like. And to the extent that you may have a local municipality that's willing to put their sticker on, it even enhances further, I think, the deterrent value, and there's things like Lot Cop and people have gotten creative. Is Lot Cop?

Tom:

Walmart.

Mike Lamb:

That's Walmart, what did we call it at Kroger?

Tom:

Patrol Cam.

Mike Lamb:

Patrol Cam,

Tom:

Which didn't make the cut over at Walmart.

‍Joel:

Tom, you tried hard though.

‍Tom:

Yeah, we did.
Joel:

I would agree. I think that's when we go back to the vandalism, I think a lot of these manufacturers have a lot of experience, and so they've hardened these things and I think that's a good call-out for companies like LiveView and some of these players in that space is these things are pretty well hardened, so they can take a beating to some degree. So the exposed cable, you can see in that picture, those yellow kind of caps that go over the cranks so that people can't mess with them. We've done specifically tires. You can secure the tires, you can remove the tires. So I think when you go back to that vandalism part, these things are kind of bare bones.

They've been built to be in this environment. And so I was actually surprised from a Walmart perspective, we don't see a tremendous amount of vandalism. You would've thought we would've seen spray painting. We've had a few tagging events where you'll see little graffiti on them. But just all those things that we worried about in the beginning, I don't really see that. Jatine, I don't know if you see it. I don't see a lot of that coming back from the field. So some of our worries didn't really manifest itself into the actual rollout of the product.

Jatine:

Yeah, I agree Joel, the one thing I started thinking about in preparation for this conversation was, Hey, our initial generation are reaching about five year lifespan, so now durability issues will kind of creep up, and we'll see how that plays out Joel.

Mike Lamb:

Thank you gentlemen. Appreciate the input.

Kevin:

Hey Mike, can I just add one more thing?

‍Mike Lamb:

You sure, certainly can, Kevin.

Kevin:

Yeah, so one of the other functionalities that we use a lot within Kroger is what we call heat censoring. So the units have the ability to heat sensor at night time, so we will be able to see warm bodies and heat things into our parking lot coming into our fuel center. So very beneficial to us.

Mike Lamb:

Yep. Thank you, Kevin. The next slide is, and I thought it was a good challenge by Adrian and Colin to say, look, nothing's impervious. What are some of the limitations that you or your team or teams have experienced with the utilization of towers? Certainly demographic, daylight hours and the amount of sunshine affect the solar capacity and optimization. I know with the LiveView towers are equipped with six car sized batteries, if you will, such that in the absence of the solar generation of power, it reverts to the batteries. Those do have a shelf life. And I know at some point at Kroger we were using generators, but that got clunky. My most recent conversation and challenge to the organization I'm supporting today is how can you enhance that? And you think about an area like Seattle in the winter months in the US, there's not a lot of sunshine, so you're relying a lot on the backup power and optimization, and they're working on a fuel cell that would run for an extended period of time.

And Joel, I know you're into the nuts and bolts in detail of design and optimization. You may have more color to add, but what is a plus can be a limitation. The pluses with solar power, you're not relying on a line, you're not relying on trenching, and you have obviously the ability for this unit to be mobile and to be able to move it. So I'll pause, I don't know Joel, if you've got anything to add or if you're aware of any enhancements relative to optimizing the solar issues in areas where it's a much bigger deal?
Joel:

Yeah, that's get caught. So from a solar perspective, one of the things that we really honed in on were the average number of sunny days that you would have in a geographic area. And so you can Google that, you can Google average number of sunny days for a particular city, and Google will tell you that, and it's interesting that cities like Miami have fewer sunny than cities like Denver. So you would instantly go, well, Denver should have a generator, right? And the reality is Denver drives a lot more sunny days and actually can sustain, you don't necessarily need a generator in that space. So that's fascinating as you start to study, okay, how do you do that?

There's fuel generates gas in terms of gasoline, there's propane options. I think that's fascinating for us because one of the challenges that we had is how do you refuel the generators? So at Walmart, associates can't transport fuel. So now you've got this maintenance program, so when it runs out of fuel, you've got to dispatch a third-party contractor to be able to go out and refuel. So if you roll these out, you've got to think through that entire life cycle. Like, okay, if I do a generator, how do I fuel these things? So it's little things like that that kind of pop up when you get these things out in the wild and start using them.

Mike Lamb:

Thank you for that input. I know Tom had mentioned to me and he may want to add some additional color that we're using propane as a form of fuel for the generator as opposed to gasoline. Is that right?

Tom:

Well, that's one of the things we're looking at because most of our stores sell propane. So that's an easy solution to get around that clunkiness like Joel was talking through. And then I don't know if it ever came to fruition Joel, but I know we were talking about as silly as this sounds because we have this big solar panel on there, maybe even plugging one of these units into a light pole.

Joel:

Yeah, that gets expensive for us because a lot of people have this problems. They'll put smart breakers on your light poles, so the on and off is being driven from the building. So that becomes a challenge. But the propane has helped us out because we've got propane tanks. Propane, there's some limitations in really cold areas because of the way that the propane responds. But yeah, shore power, we've done a lot of that in our areas where we generators couldn't keep up and we were losing powers, we would go to the light pole and try to get shore power. So that's certainly an option.

Colin:

Mike, if you can just show the last slide and then I do want to get the input from orange shaped or colored home improvement centers and from Boots and from Emmeline and from others. So maybe just the last slide and then we'll jump out and get some perspectives and questions and some thoughts.

Mike Lamb:

Yeah, the proverbial question was, I think asked on the front end, cameras have been around for a long time and capabilities of cameras have vastly evolved. So why are towers effective? And again, I think some of this we've already covered, but it's worth repeating I suppose. One, they're highly noticeable, they're large and they're imposing. The mobility and ease of installation. The fact that they can be relocated on the property or to another store is an added advantage that you don't get when you're fixed on a light pole or a wall. And again, you don't have that issue of electrical power when you have solar in lieu of that. And then the other thing, and we toyed with this a little bit actually to a fairly large extent at Kroger, is if I'm spending $200,000 a year guarding and it's only given me two-thirds of the hours that I'm open for business or the hours I'm concerned about, which are typically 24 7, then you can offset that guard spend to fund towers because as I said earlier, they don't take a day off.

We have determined, and I don't know that we've done any scientific data analysis, but we experienced and are still experiencing, I would assume at Kroger Kevin could speak to this, a marked reduction in incidents. We've had fuel centers that have been victimized, and in the presence of adding these towers, the problem virtually goes away or did go away. There was one area, it might've been Nashville had been hit four or five times in the course of a few weeks. And so we positioned a tower there and when I left the company, there had not been another incident. Now again, you may have a halo effect. Are you pushing it to another retailer or are you pushing it to another store within your chain? But the productivity piece is I think the balance between guard spend and utilization of towers. And we were doing that at Kroger, and I assume they still are.

I think that's my last slide there. Oh, the business case. Let me get to that quickly. I know there may be some questions. Costs vary for these units and I'll put a range of 25 to 30, I think that's within a few thousand north or south, a pretty accurate cost analysis. There's software costs associated with this and capabilities as you grow them also increase cost. And I won't get into the justification, I've beaten that one to death and the offset, we talked about that and what we did at Walmart and what we did at Kroger is never jump in the deep end of the pool, stick your toe in the water, and we did first, a of proof of technology, then a proof of concept. We analyzed and made a decision based on that and we've grown those or they, I should say now, at Kroger extensively across the chain. And probably upwards of seven, 800 stores. But that's really it, Colin and Adrian, and I think that's lamb out. Let me stop displaying there. So over to you guys.

Colin:

Okay, thanks very much indeed. So hopefully I'll just put my go back to this chart from Adrian, but you've got a question first off the bat from Kristen in the chat. I don't know whether Kristen, sometimes it's difficult for you to talk, I know, but if you can talk, share your question, that'd be great. And maybe just also share your perspective so far on the use of towers in Target.

Kristen Hanson:

Yeah, Kristen Hanson from Target. So we have some of these in our stores and kind of the same as what Mike you were saying definitely, seen the impact, but I think my question is, I'm curious to hear if anyone has moved them from one parking lot because you've seen enough of a reduction. Does the crime come back? Because that's one piece where it's one of those good emotional impacts to the team, but it's also a long-term investment to keep them in the parking lots for a long time. So I'm just curious if anyone has had them long enough that they've moved them around and then what happens in those parking lots?

Colin:

Yeah, I mean maybe Joel or Tom, you could take that question.

Tom:

Yeah, I can talk from our experience over at Kroger. Candidly, we try not to move. We might move them around in the parking lot, but if you think about from a liability standpoint, our attorneys would advise us if you put it there for a reason, if the crime went down and then you did happen to move it to a different location and then something were to happen, you'd get criticized for that. It'd be good plaintiff's fodder for litigation. So we try not to. We have in emergency situations when we were going through civil unrest, we pulled some from some parking lots, but it wouldn't be for a sustained, we're mitigating some risk. So it would be for a day or so or a week, but with the intent of putting it back. Nine times out of 10 though, if we think we have an additional need, we would purchase another unit rather than move it around. So that's kind of been our experience at Kroger.

‍Kristen Hanson:

Great. That's similar to what we are seeing as well. So I wanted some validation that we're thinking about it the same way.

Colin:

I mean, Joel or Jatine, anything to add to that?

Joel:

Nothing to really add around that. I mean, typically, we haven't had them long enough to take advantage of trying to remove them and see if the crime comes back. What I would say about moving is typically these are like WiFi connected to a building. So even Jatine his world, let's say hurricanes. So when you start thinking about moving, that's where we do a lot of, hey, we got to take these things down and secure them during high wind or severe weather. So those are things you got to think about in terms of just moving, how do you do that and how do you get them set back up so that they communicate and so that the field teams can do that and you're not having to necessarily dispatch technicians. So there is a whole kind of thought process around just daily care and feed when you have to move something for an event. It could be civil unrest, it could be political unrest. There's different things that you may try to strategically move things to address an issue. So there are movement things you got to consider there.

‍Colin:

No, thank you for that. Let's come back to London and the UK. And Iona is a really regular member of this working group and Iona just would like your perspective from the car parking perspective with what we say over here in the UK, by the way it's car parks. But also Iona, I know that you've got something similar that goes inside the store that looks like a tower. So provide, if you can share just what you've learned so far what you're thinking about this particular application.

Iona:

Yeah. Thank you Colin. So yeah, we've got a similar kind of device. It started off a rental device from a company called PID in the UK, and it looks very similar to your kind of towers that you've been using in the car park. The ones we've been using are quite beefy. They're bright blue and bright yellow. It's quite obvious what they are, but we use them post a burglary whilst we're waiting for target hardening and we find deploying them into the stores either the same day or the day after we've been broken into and an overnight device. And what they do is they alarm. So if anyone crosses the PIR, it communicates back to our CCTV monitoring center and it enables us to do some broadcasts through the device, but it has bright blue lights flashing as soon as you interrupt the PIR as well.

And they've been really successful for so much so that we spent an awful lot of money renting them and we've now developed our own in-house one and purchase them outright to kind of use install and deploy same day and keep the cost a bit lower. I guess what this has made me think about is where we've got a retail park, would I potentially support the landlord in having a very similar advice to the towers deployed whilst we're going through the target hardening? Quite often what we do see in our bigger footprint stores that get broken into that are on the retail parks, if they've not got shutters, et cetera, you do then see the individuals come back. The devices we've got are great for smaller format shops, high streets, that kind of location, but not on the bigger footprint ones. So I'm almost wondering would we collaborate with the landlord today part payment to having a video tower while undertaking the work? So that's definitely got me thinking on that for sure, but it's not a dissimilar context to what we were already deploying out in store.

Colin:

Okay, thank you. Just while we're in the UK, Paul Sayward is with Sainsbury's. And Paul, I showed one of your mighty vans mobile CCTV units. I wonder whether you could share your perspective on what you've seen here so far and the differences versus the commercial van that you have at the car parks. Paul, are you there? Yeah.

Paul Sayward:

Yes. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so we have at the moment three what we call mobile disruption units, which are CCD equipped vans. They're liveried up, so they look very obvious that they're security vehicles. Their absolute purpose is for their mobile ability. So we are used for deployment specifically, whereas obviously these towers are the opposite end in terms of being more of a static and permanent approach, albeit they are somewhat moveable. We are exploring some of the ideas of having these towers because we are looking at how do we deter and disrupt homelessness and social behavior in and around our multi-storey car parks as well as our flat level car parks along with vehicles as well. So yeah, something we are exploring.

Colin:

Okay. And what success have you had with the vans? Is that been a good success?

Paul Sayward:

Yeah, I mean similar to one of the other questions we had was what does it look like once they're removed? So obviously once they're in play, we do see a fairly decent return on the levels of reductions, but because the whole point of these is to be mobile, we do see a less of an effect obviously once they've left, but the overall reduction is still there. What we need to work out is what does that deployment look like? Do we have these vans deployed for say four weeks, take them away and then bring them back again after a week or two weeks and how long can we extend that reduction without having them physically there the whole time? So we're still working through towards those deployment plans look like.

Colin:

No, thank you very much for that Paul. Ryan, over there in America in Grand Rapids. Ryan or Luke, what are your thoughts on these towers at Myer Stores?

Ryan:

I'll let Luke respond. He's owned a lot of our current status with using the tool recently.

Luke:

Yeah, so we've just finishing up a proof of concept at Myer. We've got a few of the units that we're testing in a couple stores. Initially we tried testing it in some of our higher risk locations and then on down the tier where finding so far, and it's still honestly a little too early, but what we've found so far is we're seeing the best impact from both a customer feedback and from a shrink push out ORC standpoint at our medium risk tier stores. So we're certainly utilizing this or we're wanting to utilize it for safety in the parking lot, but we also think there's shrink dollars to gotten back from that as well.

Colin:

Okay. And what about the question from Kristen? If you buy one of these, do you imagine that they will be mobile or do you think they'll have to stay where they are?

Luke:

We've already repositioned one in the parking lot, I think similar to what Kroger said that they're doing just to get a better view of our doors and things like that. We're toying around with and tossing around the question of can we rapidly redeploy one of these to a nearby location if we have an incident that occurs? So we've not done that yet, but those are questions that we're asking and trying to figure out how we would do that without increasing the risk at the location that we've removed it from.

Colin:

No, thank you for that. I do think that the shopper aspect and several, you have talked about it quite a lot is important here, how the shoppers feel about it and how it helps them be more comfortable shopping at your locations. Let's go to Chris at CVS. Chris, you've got the link eventually, but how are CVS and how are you thinking about it, Chris?

‍Chris:

Yeah, I don't know if you guys can hear me. Hopefully you can.

‍Colin:

Yeah, we can.

‍Chris:

I actually just got wind that we have deployed a few of these. I'm out in California. So we put a few of them down in the LA markets. I've talked to some of my counterparts down there. I think we're still trying to learn how to utilize it. That's why I'm learning a lot today actually, of how you guys are utilizing it and obviously the concept of speaking through them sounds terrific, especially with that video that you guys recently shared. So I don't have too much information, more so I'm just learning today, but I love the concept of it. I think it's going to help a lot, especially with when we have guard budgets and we're trying to figure out how to deploy them. And to you guys' point earlier, the 24 7 utilization is wonderful because obviously we don't have the budget to have guards at our locations 24, 7. So having something that can monitor the parking lot and keep our employees safe, have the customers feel safe, it's almost like a win-win. So I honestly can't wait to get my hands around some of these to be honest with you.

Colin:

Okay, very good. We have a couple of people from the Orange Home Improvement Retailer, Chapelle or Kelly or Katherine, who would like to speak to the home Depot perspective.

Matt Kelley:

Yeah, I can speak to them. Everything Mike talked about is exactly how we're building our business case. We're building out a more robust solution and trying to take advantage of every functionality that the parking lot towers provide to us. We've even started using them and deploying them and testing it for homeless encampments. And that's something we really haven't talked about. So if you've got a homeless encampment that's adjacent to or on your property, how can you use that in partnership with, because oftentimes it's hard to get the local municipalities to engage with you to help manage those. So we're using those as a tool to say, look at all the things that we've done. We need your help.

But then also piping in music overnight to make it uncomfortable or difficult for them to sleep in their encampments or using the live monitoring when those individuals may stray onto our property and using the talk down function, but then also saying, Hey, if you're not going to respond to the talk down function, let's go ahead and call local law enforcement to trespass these people and to use every available function for these towers so we get the most return out of it. I will say that Mike talked a little bit about the efficacy of those. We've seen a significant reduction in the stores that we have these as a standalone, not with pairing with guards or anything like that in the serious incidents we've seen in the parking lot. So everything that he spoke to is exactly what we're seeing in terms of how we're measuring it and being able to speak to our executive and senior leadership teams about how effective these tools are for us.

‍Colin:

Thank you very much for that. I think my wife has a playlist for you to use, if you do need that playlist. Bob Oberosler over there at Family Dollar, but what's going through your mind? I mean, I'm thinking about the business case. It's an interesting one.

Bob Oberosler:

Yeah, we've tested a few of them. We have a distribution center that has a homeless encampment, and so we get constant attempts of scaling the fence and getting the yard. And we deployed one of these and sure enough we not only scale the fence, we got them pictures of the ladder hidden in the bushes, which they use to go scale the fences. So we were able to get that ladder out of there and then the call downs have been working. So I think we're going to solve a problem in one of our distribution centers near the train tracks near a homeless encampment. We haven't had a lot of activities since the first couple of weeks. We tied it into the guards that we do have on the premises. So when those alerts come, when they see that motion, the guards get it on their iPhone and immediately get in a golf cart and get over there.

So a lot less activity. Just now starting to test it in stores that have had a lot of activity and we're getting some early positive responses out of it from the store management teams. And we've seen a lot less activity. So too early to tell in the store. The big thing here is when you're a yellow or orange banner or blue banner or a big supermarket, you got a lot more sales in those boxes and 20 to 25 to $30,000 on that type of sale, it's a reasonable expense. When you're a smaller box, 8,500 square feet, you're kind of sitting there alone in a parking lot, that becomes a pretty big expense for a 8,500 square foot box. So there's going to be an awful lot of crunching numbers.

Look, we take safety very seriously and we do a lot of good fortifications. This could be a tactic that we add, but it is a little bit more on a percent to sales, percent to profitability becomes a little bit bigger stretch for a 8,500 square foot box versus a 58,000 square foot box or 115,000 square foot box. But we're excited by it. We're excited by the potential of it.

Colin:

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Thank you for that. Jim Cossabon at Delhaize. Ahold, Delhaize and the brands. What are you thinking about when we got these towers?

Jim Cossabon:

Yeah, thanks Colin. This is actually very timely. We actually had a demonstration on site of this product two weeks ago, and so it's prompted a lot of internal discussion, different use cases. Again, we're expanding our supply chain, so looking at distribution centers where we've had problems, but absolutely stores we tend to, if we have a high risk store, we'll use parking lot security patrols, which even if they're on the top of their game, they can only be in one place at a time and looking, is this something that can replace it? Not to mention all the value added, whether it's a remote escort for associates, different things. So it's tying in our strategy of our centralized monitoring and we are actively exploring deploying something.

‍Colin:

And do you imagine that you will integrate it into your monitoring center or is it something that would be a standalone? Where do you see the integration coming in and then any alerts that's been mentioned in some of the chats?

‍Jim Cossabon:

Yep. We've been making a migration from a central station alarm monitoring to more holistic monitoring center. I see it as a great tool in the toolbox to be able to monitor. Of course, one of those is, as someone mentioned before, noise and it's getting the right balance that we're not overloading that monitoring center, but getting the right things to them for when they need to take action. But I think a lot of what I saw, a lot of it the tower can do itself, and so escalation to human intervention is more of an exception. So it's something that we're excited that whether again know whether it's permanent or a temporary issue that you have to be able to rapidly deploy.

Colin:

Very helpful. Well look, let's get back to Adrian and perhaps just to wrap this session up, there's more questions. We'll put them in the chat, but just in the interest of time, and you all got busy schedules. Adrian, do you want to just wrap up what you think you've heard here and where this fits in your wheel of video?

Adrian:

Yes, thanks, Colin. Yeah, it's been a very interesting chat, isn't it? I suppose for me, where I'm still left pondering all of this is what is the difference between this and a camera on a pole? Because we need to understand what are the triggers that are being claimed this is doing because we've had CCTV around retail stores and in CCTV stores for 20, 30 years now. And what is it suddenly about this that is making the claim difference? Is it simply that it's just adding elements in that you could actually add through a camera on a pole? We know that Iona, for instance, at Boots has the capability to offend us through her cameras in stores and out of stores. We know that you can attach lights to cameras. We've seen that before. We've known that you can play music through cameras before now.

So I think we need to really unpick a little bit what's the real difference between a camera with wheels on the bottom and a solar panel in terms of delivering difference and having a network of cameras around stores and around car parks doing essentially the same thing. What are the triggers that we need to understand here that is making this to be claimed so effective? That's where I'm still pondering a little bit, Colin, to be honest.

Colin:

And where did you see, did see any evidence or hear anything new that came up today that would say that would support these things, these cameras and towers?

‍Adrian:

Well, I can only assume that when you're thinking about the deterrent component, is it because they're really terribly overt? This is very obvious to camera because obviously cameras can just fade into the background around a building. So if you've got a camera on a pole, do you paint it yellow? We've seen this with speed cameras where you can paint them yellow to try and make them more aware to drivers, and they do slow down more when you can see them. So in terms of the deterrence, I can see that perhaps they are more physically present and therefore likely to deter. But in terms of the other elements around this, around being able to communicate with offenders, there's nothing new about that. As I say, we can see that through other technologies in terms of providing reassurance. We've seen it before how staff and customers always feel more reassured by the presence of cameras.

And then in terms of number plate recognition, well again, lots of cameras can do that sort of thing. So there's nothing new around that. So I can only assume that it's because they are so overt. That is clearly the trigger that is stopping offenders doing what people are claiming that they're doing. In terms of the video we saw where the young chaps ran away, they clearly hadn't seen it. So the visibility had failed in that respect. But I could have had a camera and I could have communicated them without it being on wheels. So I'm not being a skeptic, but I just think we need to think through with all these sorts of video technologies, what are the mechanisms that's been triggered here? And is there anything particularly unique about this? Because as I say, as an industry, we've had a very, very long track record of using video technologies.

Colin:

Yeah, I was intrigued by the comment about marking them up as though they were linked to law enforcement. I thought that was quite interesting. Emmeline has joined us. Emmeline is from City University. Emmeline you've got an interesting point about displacement. Do you want to just share your question?

Emmeline:

Thanks Colin, and thank you for the presentation. I did find it really interesting having done various pieces of research around visual surveillance technologies, there's certainly a trend, I think away from static cameras to having some mobility within them. And included in that is dash cams, body worn cameras and redeployable cameras. I think there's a recognition that crime itself is often mobile or shifts in its presentation, and so an ability to follow it round to a certain degree is very useful. I think with these, I would call them redeployable cameras, but it was interesting in some of the commentary that once they're in situ, it's very unlikely that they are then actually moved, and then I would pick upon Adrian's point, I think, then why not use a camera on a pole and actually make it static? If there is a strong case that that camera is creating a difference and it's being effective in that position, then why keep it as a redeployable one.

My real point here is around deterrence. So I think that the overtness of the cameras to somebody who's criminally inclined would have quite a large impact. These are the very noticeable, aren't they? But then what does that mean for displacement? So we've talked about temporal displacement, meaning that the crime won't take place at the time that the camera is in situ, but we also have geographic displacement, so will it just be moved to outside the vision of the cameras? Now, that could be in very close proximity, but just beyond the field of vision, or it could be kilometers away that it's moved to a different place.

We also have tactical displacement, so that might be thinking about the image where all the cars are parked underneath the cameras. Will somebody who's criminally inclined, who's looking to make a fast buck, might not then break into one of those cars to steal something from it, but they might then choose a different type of crime that isn't as visible on camera in order to commit it. So there's lots of different ways of thinking about displacement, and I just wonder if we need to think more broadly about the criminal mind and how you might choose different activities at different times in order to achieve the same outcome, which essentially is usually to gain money. So yeah, few comments sort of tangled up there, I think.

Colin:

If you hadn't guessed Emmeline's an academic at the City University paid to ask difficult questions. But any other comments and questions from the group? If not, I'm going to just say thank you very, very much Mike for the presentation and for the insights. Thank you. Also to Jatine, Joel, Kevin for again, your surround sound in terms of how this is working and yeah, I certainly am very fascinated by how this plays out and I do think they're making a difference. My push would be to get to understand what the shopper thinks and does this make the shopper feel safer and to get some shopper insights, which sounds like Maya are doing at least. But I think more of the shopper insights would be helpful here. Mike, anything you wanted to say to wrap up?

Mike Lamb:

No, I just appreciate the opportunity to have a chat with peers and colleagues in the industry and just appreciate the time. So thank you.

‍Colin:

Thank you very much. And there's some nice comments, Kevin, in the chat there. I'll let everyone get back to their very busy days. It does seem as though everyone's swamped these days. But thank you everyone for your participation. This is recorded so you can come back and revisit these discussions. Adrian, again, thank you for setting up the framework in which we can think about it and we'll let you all go back to your days. Thank you again and fantastic. All the very best. Bye-bye.

Kevin:

Bye.