Digital retail startup Cooler Screens scales 10X in 6 months with Microsoft technology and support

Optimizing the consumer experience

With 90 percent of purchases still taking place in brick-and-mortar stores, retailers and brands have a significant opportunity to enhance and monetize consumer experiences using digital technology. The founders of Cooler Screens saw an opportunity to do just that, using part of the store that most people take for granted: the doors of refrigerators and freezers.

With funding from Microsoft M12, a venture capital fund that invests in early-stage startups disrupting the enterprise, the company was able to turn its vision into reality quickly by building its IoT and data platform entirely on Microsoft Azure. In addition to capital, Microsoft provided technology expertise and executive support to drive solution maturity and market growth. “From the earliest days of our company we have had a productive relationship with Microsoft,” says Marcel Munoz, Vice President of Product at Cooler Screens. “Starting from the initial proof of concept to where we are today, Azure has been our foundation.”

Cooler Screens transforms the in-person shopping experience by turning retail surfaces, such as cooler doors, into IoT-enabled digital smart screens that respond to customer presence, door movement, stock levels, and more using built-in sensors. Before a consumer approaches a door, it displays static or video content such as ads or educational information. Once they are close enough, it changes to a planogram view showing what's behind the door, enhanced with additional product information consumers would typically find in e-commerce including pricing, promotions, nutritional information, and product ratings. Because the sensors only detect motion and do not capture any personally identifiable information, the system provides privacy by design.

Behind the scenes, a scalable retail media platform empowers brands and retailers with powerful tools to simplify operations and connect with consumers. “Instead of managing physical tags, the digital shelf image can be updated in real time, saving retailers hundreds of hours of labor,” says Gayle deDie, Vice President of Marketing at Cooler Screens. “For their part, brands can highlight relevant product information at the moment of truth to drive sales and build brand equity simultaneously.” 

Using anonymous data collected by the digital doors, retailers and brands can analyze customer behavior at a granular level, as well as connect that information with contextual data such as time of day, season, weather, and geography to gain deeper insights. The company has been able to demonstrate increases in likelihood to purchase, net promoter scores, and sales based on data from the doors. 

Building a platform that evolves

From the seed of an idea, Cooler Screens has grown to an enterprise-scale platform powering more than 10,000 connected devices. Building in the Azure cloud dramatically accelerated the timeline from idea to prototype to production and has empowered technology visionaries at the company to rapidly realize their plans for innovation. 

One such leader is Bryan Goettsch, Chief Architect at Cooler Screens, who joined the company in late 2020 to drive the next level of maturity in its solution architecture. More than anyone, he understands that delivering this seamless experience to consumers requires a complex orchestration of data, analytics, and IoT behind the scenes. “The Microsoft M12 relationship was key to getting us off the ground,” says Goettsch. “Additionally, our commitment to building everything on Azure has enabled us to rapidly grow and mature our platform. It’s running everything for us from the edge to the cloud.” 

Using Azure IoT Hub to scale

The Cooler Screens ecosystem relies on a vast and growing deployment of sophisticated, multi-sensor IoT devices—the doors themselves, which must be provisioned and updated. Once in service, data is constantly streaming to and from the doors, whether it’s a motion sensor detecting that a cooler has been opened or rotating ads and product information provided by a brand.

To support scalable, reliable, and security-enabled communication between devices and the cloud, Cooler Screens chose Azure IoT Hub. “Azure IoT Hub is absolutely indispensable because it allows us to manage tens of thousands of devices without having to build any infrastructure,” says Goettsch. “From rolling out application software to biweekly updates, the whole flow is fantastic.”

Manufacturers install secure keys on the doors. Then, when the doors are installed, Cooler Screens uses Azure IoT Hub Device Provisioning Service to get them up and running using a zero-touch model. “When a door goes up in a store, it knows exactly which software it’s supposed to run,” notes Goettsch. His team uses Azure DevOps solutions to run two-week sprints, containerizing updates and deploying them through Azure IoT Edge automatic deployments.

Getting the doors up and running is only the first step. The real magic of Cooler Screens happens through its massive data platform, which enables retailers and brands to access data insights. Cooler Screens built these experiences using fully modern cloud architecture, including Azure serverless computing, Azure Logic Apps integration platform-as-a-service, and Azure API Apps.  

Product feeds keep information up to date in real time. All the while, the system integrates sensor data throughout the value chain. Processing all this data relies on a robust set of interoperable services, including Databricks for Apache Spark-based analytics, Azure Data Factory to enable hybrid data integration, and Azure Data Lake Analytics supporting massively parallel data transformation.

Changing with the times

The pay-as-you-go nature of the cloud and the ongoing release of innovative services on Azure enables Cooler Screens to choose optimal solutions for Cooler Screens’ customer needs and growth stage. By reducing or eliminating the need to manage infrastructure and platform services, the company’s architecture can evolve as its needs grow. For example, the initial data analytics ecosystem was designed for efficient batch processing of data, but Goettsch envisions the ability to give retailers and brands true real-time insights.

To accomplish that goal, his team is consolidating databases onto the fully managed Azure SQL Database service, deploying customer-facing Microsoft Power BI dashboards, and considering the adoption of Azure Data Explorer, a fully managed, high-performance, big data analytics platform. “Using Azure Data Explorer will allow us to take a quantum leap in our ability to deliver real-time insights to our clients, whether a regional out-of-stock or the performance of an ad campaign.” says Goettsch.

Scaling with confidence

With its entire technology stack built on Azure—including IoT management, development pipeline, content delivery, data storage and analytics, web apps, and more—Cooler Screens was well-positioned for explosive growth. That’s exactly what it achieved, rocketing from 1,000 screens to 10,000 in just six months from early to late 2021. 

Goettsch and his team were able to adapt the application as needed to meet the needs of a vastly larger hardware fleet. Supporting their efforts, Azure scaled effortlessly. “With Azure IoT Hub, we’ve had no issues at all going from zero to 1,000 devices, and then to 10,000,” says Goettsch. “Azure services scaled dynamically so we could focus on the application side of things.” 

Today, Cooler Screens partners with retailers across grocery, drug and convenience stores including Walgreens, Kroger, CVS, Circle K, Giant Eagle / Get Go, ExtraMile and Chevron.

Realizing a visionary future

Using Azure isn’t just about growth, it’s also about continuously improving the customer experience. For example, the team is working on adding greater interactivity through QR codes, as well as voice-enabled experiences such as wayfinding. Using Azure Cognitive Services, they can rapidly integrate text-to-speech and intention analytics without building their own machine learning models or APIs. Internally, they are moving toward a true integration/continuous deployment model on Azure DevOps for even more frequent updates to device software. 

With the flexibility and continuous innovation built into Azure, Cooler Screens is positioned to capitalize on its first-mover advantage in the world of digitally enabled retail experiences. “Microsoft Azure enabled us to achieve 10x growth in a very short time without having to worry about the platform at all,” concludes Goettsch. “My mission is to help us be ready for the next 10x. I know Azure will be with us all the way.”