Hobbii, a leading yarn retailer with stores across Denmark and Germany, has standardized on CountMatters’ customer counter system and retail footfall analytics to bring live visibility to every store. The goal is a privacy-safe occupancy monitoring solution that turns real-time visitor data into faster decisions, better staffing, and smoother shopper experiences — from entrance to checkout.
THE RETAIL CHALLENGE
Traffic patterns keep shifting. Seasonal peaks, payday surges, local events, and weather swings all change demand by the hour. Without reliable retail footfall analytics, decisions lean on gut feel: queues grow, staff are misallocated, and campaign impact is hard to prove. Hobbii needed one shared, trustworthy truth for store teams and head office alike — updated every few seconds, comparable across locations, and easy to act on.
THE COUNTMATTERS SOLUTION
CountMatters deploys ceiling-mounted people counting sensors at entrances, checkout zones, and key aisles. Sensors capture anonymous in/out counts and send them securely to the cloud. Dashboards refresh in near real time and present store-friendly views (live occupancy, queue pressure, arrivals per minute) as well as chain-level KPIs for benchmarking and planning.
Each zone has clear thresholds. When live occupancy approaches a limit, an alert prompts the team to open another till, redirect staff to fitting rooms, or guide customer flow to quieter areas. Historical patterns help predict the next peak by weekday and hour so managers can prepare before congestion forms.
DATA FLOW & INTEGRATION
Data moves from sensors to secure cloud services, then into Hobbii’s BI layer via APIs. On the shop floor, teams see a simple card view: current occupancy, queue status, and expected peaks later today. At head office, analysts compare like-for-like across regions, correlate footfall with labor hours and sales, and evaluate the uplift from promotions — all using the same definitions and time windows.
Dashboards blend live tiles and historical trends: hour-of-day profiles, week-over-week and year-over-year comparisons, and walkway heatmaps to reveal where attention and assortment pay off. To reduce time-to-action, each view proposes a “next best action,” for example: “Open register 3 now” or “Shift one colleague to the front-of-store for 20 minutes.”
DOCUMENTED EFFECT
Stable data quality: With correct mounting and zone setup, counts remain consistent across lighting and traffic conditions.
Better staffing match: Shifts align with real demand, cutting bottlenecks at checkout and service points.
Campaign clarity: Compare pre/post footfall and conversion using clean sensor baselines, not anecdote.
Scalable rollout: Template-based configuration speeds expansion to new stores with minimal rework.
USE CASES ACROSS THE STORE NETWORK
STAFFING & PEAK MANAGEMENT
Live occupancy and arrivals per minute inform lane openings, queue management, and micro-redeployments. Teams cut guesswork and react before friction escalates.
STORE LAYOUT & MERCHANDISING
Measure movement and dwell to evaluate end caps, seasonal tables, and gondolas. When layout matches traffic, more browsers become buyers.
MARKETING ROI
Run clean A/Bs by time-boxing campaigns and matching them with footfall and conversion. Spot which creatives bring people in — and which placements convert them.
OPERATIONS & QUALITY
Teams spend less time on manual counts and more time on customers. Chain leadership gets a consistent language for performance across countries.
IMPLEMENTATION: FROM PILOT TO ROLLOUT
The journey starts with a short pilot in two or three representative stores. The pilot tunes sensor placement, zone definitions, and reporting templates. Once validated, the setup becomes a rollout template for the rest of the network. Training follows a train-the-trainer model, with lightweight QA on data quality before each store goes fully live.
Technically, CountMatters follows “secure by default” and “frictionless integration”: encrypted transport, role-based access, minimal load on store networks, and API endpoints that map cleanly into BI. Alerts, dashboards, and exports use shared definitions so local teams and central analysts work from the same playbook.
PRIVACY BY DESIGN
The solution is purpose-built to avoid personal data. Sensors provide counts — no faces, no IDs, no biometrics. Data is aggregated and retained only as long as needed for clear purposes (operations, safety, experience). That design keeps the stack aligned with GDPR principles while still providing the operational intelligence retailers need.
ROI & OPERATIONAL IMPACT
When demand and resources finally match, friction drops. Stores prevent the “silent losses” that happen when queues push customers away or when products sit in low-traffic zones. Head office gains control of conversion levers — staffing, layout, and promotions — and can prove impact week by week.
MINI-FAQ
How accurate is it? With proper mounting and calibration, modern people counting delivers very high accuracy even in dense flows and varied lighting.
Does it track individuals? No. The system processes anonymous counts only. No images or identifiers are stored.
Can we scale to many stores? Yes. Template-based rollout and remote configuration make expansion efficient; data quality is monitored centrally.
How fast is implementation? Pilot stores go live quickly. Rollouts reuse the pilot template with minor adaptations to layout.
Bring an occupancy monitoring solution and customer counter system to every Hobbii store. Turn live insight into better experiences and higher conversion — one action at a time.
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