Kings Plant Barn is a renowned New Zealand garden retailer offering a broad range of plants, gardening tools, and outdoor supplies. The Kings Plant Barn Stonefields location, situated on Lunn Avenue in Auckland, serves as one of their flagship stores. This store not only focuses on providing a wide selection of gardening products but also emphasizes sustainability. It features eco-friendly initiatives, such as solar panels to harness renewable energy and a rainwater harvesting system to reduce water consumption. These green practices reflect Kings Plant Barn's commitment to sustainability and their desire to minimize their environmental footprint while creating an inviting space for customers to explore.
The Stonefields location includes a spacious retail area, a lush garden zone, and a café designed to provide a relaxing atmosphere. With the goal of enhancing the shopping and dining experience, Kings Plant Barn turned to Nathan Collins from Victor Contractors to implement an advanced audio system that would align with their sustainable ethos while providing high-quality, user-friendly sound across different zones.
Project Objectives
- Design and install a versatile audio system for both the retail and café areas.
- Ensure seamless audio distribution for various zones, each with specific audio requirements.
- Integrate music services and control systems that are easy for the staff to manage.
- Provide consistent, high-quality sound across different spaces with varying acoustics.
To meet the project’s objectives, Victor Contractors worked with Direct Imports (NZ’s Audac Distributor) to collate the best suited products for the design & install. Products were carefully selected to suit audio specification and design to ensure Kings Plant Barn received a comprehensive solution.
The installation was designed & implemented by Nathan Collins at Victor Contractors who has extensive knowledge in the live & install audio industry. To meet the unique requirements of the Kings Plant Barn Stonefields location high-quality sound coverage was ensured across both the retail and café spaces, SPL Mapping & acoustic reports were undertaken to ensure SPL & coverage of speakers were kept at an optimum while neighbouring properties and boundaries were also carefully kept in mind. The project was completed in July 2022 and required careful consideration of acoustics, hardware placement, and zone management to deliver a seamless, flexible system.
Retail Space
The main retail area of Kings Plant Barn was equipped with WX502MK2 speakers & ALTI6 Pendant Speakers, strategically placed to provide clear, uniform sound throughout the space. These loudspeakers are ideal for commercial environments, offering excellent performance with an emphasis on even sound coverage, even in large areas with varying acoustics. To complement the system, WX502MK2-B outdoor speakers were installed in the garden and outdoor areas, ensuring that the same high-quality audio could be heard outside, regardless of weather conditions.
The café area required an audio solution that was easy to control while providing a relaxed & discrete atmosphere. The ALTI 6-B pendant speakers were used for discreet and high-fidelity sound, ensuring that customers could enjoy their meals with top notch background music. The café staff can control the audio system effortlessly with the iPad running Audac Touch & a MWX65 digital zone wall controller, allowing them to adjust volume levels, switch between music sources, or change the audio settings with ease. A dual XLR wall mic input was also provided for flexibility for AV suppliers to be able to connect pro audio mixers to the system for events.
The inclusion of 2x Soundtrack Your Brand Licenses on NMP40 network players ensured that Kings Plant Barn could curate playlists and deliver tailored audio experiences to the café space, improving the customer experience with professionally designed playlists suitable for retail environments.
The MTX88 Matrix provided advanced routing and zoning capabilities, allowing Kings Plant Barn to easily manage audio across different spaces. This meant that different parts of the store could have different audio content, such as music in the retail area and announcements or promotions over the loudspeakers.
The new audio system at Kings Plant Barn Stonefields has had a significant positive impact on both the customer experience and business operations:
- Improved Customer Experience: The store now benefits from clear, professional sound in every part of the premises, whether customers are shopping indoors, enjoying the outdoor garden area, or relaxing in the café.
- Enhanced Atmosphere: The seamless integration of curated music via Soundtrack Your Brand has created a pleasant environment for customers, ensuring the right mood is set at all times.
- Easy System Management: Staff can quickly adjust the system using the intuitive Audac Touch on the iPad or wall controllers, making it easy to manage audio content in different zones.
- Reliable Performance: The system's robustness ensures long-term performance with minimal maintenance, providing Kings Plant Barn with a durable audio solution.
Conclusion
The successful completion of the audio system installation at Kings Plant Barn Stonefields has provided them with a high-quality, flexible, and easy-to-manage audio solution. The integration of advanced Audac equipment has enhanced the shopping and dining experience for customers while offering Kings Plant Barn full control over their audio setup. The project has set a new standard for retail and café audio environments, providing both technical excellence and ease of use.
