Image courtesy of Sun & Ski Sports.

Sun & Ski Sports is deploying Carousel Cloud throughout its organization to showcase the products and services it offers to its customer base of outdoor enthusiasts, according to a press release.

The Stafford, Texas-based specialty outdoor apparel, footwear and equipment retailer is leveraging Carousel Cloud's customized, season specific content to its 32 stores in 12 states. Sun & Ski Sports handles all marketing and creative efforts in-house, including store signage, email, social media, digital display, website, print ads and distribution of video content to displays in its stores. The retailer previously used a legacy video publishing process that required team members to deliver individual USB thumb drives loaded with content to each store location, Robert Budnik Jr., director of brand marketing at Sun & Ski Sports, said in the press release. "We would mail them out to our 32 locations every few months," he explained. "The amount of work involved in purchasing the thumb drives, loading them with video content and then sending them off and following up with each store to ensure fresh content was uploaded before each season became a logistical nightmare."

This system was also inefficient when tailoring specific content to each location.

"A store in Houston doesn't need to receive content about local ski or bike rentals, but our resort store locations like in Colorado and Mammoth Lakes do," he said. "I wanted a solution that would allow us to publish customized content relevant to each specific local market easily."

Budnik first encountered Carousel Digital Signage solutions while working at another retailer and identified Carousel Cloud as the best solution for Sun & Ski Sports, with Apple TV players for playback. The retailer began testing Carousel Cloud at two locations in Texas and Maryland during the fall of 2021.

Approximately 95% of Sun & Ski Sports content runs on consumer-facing displays which are positioned throughout each store. These screens run lifestyle and action footage of people engaged in various year-round outdoor activities, such as skiing, snowboarding, hiking, watersports, biking, running and more.

Each marketing campaign runs every four to six weeks, with two team members overseeing video content development, scheduling and distribution.

In the upcoming year, Sun & Ski Sports will install displays with Apple TV players in its corporate headquarters. Carousel Cloud will push employee-facing messaging developed by different departments, including human resources — accentuating the software's ease of use for users of any skillset.

"We don't have to transfer files to thumb drives any more and if issues arise, we can quickly fix it from our centralized hub," Budnik said. "We no longer have to walk a local store manager through troubleshooting an unfamiliar technology. We instead focus on running the right content at the right time, and we have much more control over our message and what our customers see on the screen."

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