Case Study | Luxottica

With the implementation of tablets in 3,100 stores, Luxottica’s network wasn’t prepared for the bandwidth constraints it was about to endure. When accessed by thousands of customers simultaneously, the rich-media product catalogs on the tablets left consumers waiting…and waiting. Oftentimes, products would take 30-90 seconds to load—leaving consumers frustrated and walking out empty-handed. While the company’s initial tablet strategy was in place, Luxottica soon realized the solution wasn’t creating the experience they’d envisioned. Luxottica needed a solution that would allow consumers to browse product catalogs without slow, unreliable connectivity.

With the need to enhance the tablet application’s performance, Luxottica turned to STRATACACHE to install its Retail Proxy solution. The Retail Proxy provides local storage of remote web or mobile content, applications, training materials, or media files. In a retail environment, small proxy appliances are placed in stores and automatically programmed to cache frequently used content accessed by consumers and store associates. Caching is extremely important because it allows retailers and brands to offer consumers highly compelling, rich-media experiences in- store (on tablets, Smartphones, digital signs, kiosks, etc.) without clogging up the network uplink to headquarters. Caching unlocks the ability to deliver cool apps to consumers in-store without spending a fortune on bandwidth.

Viewed as an integral part of the core infrastructure, Luxottica deployed one Retail Proxy per location, in addition to a parent proxy at its headquarters. STRATACACHE prepopulates and configures content on the Retail Proxy, so once it reaches the store, it is ready for use. The parent proxy is looped to the 3,100 Retail Proxies at the store locations, so any content that hasn’t been cached locally goes through the parent proxy.

Alleviating network consumption and enhancing the application browsing experience, the STRATACACHE Retail Proxy allowed Luxottica to deliver rich, engaging content at a much faster speed. With the Retail Proxy installed, content response time on the tablet was minimized to a mere 1-3 seconds, compared to the initial 30-90 seconds of buffering customers once encountered. By deploying the Retail Proxy, Luxottica was able to accomplish the customer experience they’d always envisioned. Customers no longer leave frustrated, and the need to showroom is eliminated. With much anticipated success, Luxottica intends to deploy Retail Proxies in all 7,500 of its retail stores.