Hong Kong's leading CIOs of 2011 - enterpriseinnovation.net

INDUSTRYPROFILE
Vizualize: Shopping environment tracking is big biz
Shopping-environment tracking-related tools work for industries such as
hospitality as well as retailers, says Vizualize CEO Michael MacMillan
By Teresa Leung
CWHK: Your brief background
Michael MacMillan: I have been in
tech for 25 years. Prior to this current
shopping environment tracking business,
I built automation systems and
lighting control systems.
Out of my 14 years in Asia, I spent ten
in Hong Kong. My cousin invited me here
because he had set up a people-counting
system and was looking for someone to
lead his Asian business. But I quickly saw
opportunities in shopping-environment
tracking, which is more interesting than
people-counting because of the exciting
retail space in Hong Kong.
CWHK: When was Vizualize founded
Is the company Hong Kong-headquartered
MM: Vizualize is a Hong Kong company.
Mac Chan—the other founder of
Visualize and a bright tech guy—and
we bumped into each other in Hong
Kong in late 2003. Having complementary
skills, we decided to partner and
kicked off our business in 2005.
CWHK: How many people now work for
your company
MM: We have ten people—four are on
the Hong Kong-based R&D team. We
look to partner with local universities—
for instance, in the area of computer
vision, which is about making use of
algorithms in interpreting data related
to traffic in stores.
CWHK: How do you ensure shopper
privacy
MM: Our products don’t video-record
people or collect their personal data.
What our products help clients do is to
interpret what shoppers do. So we have
cameras installed which point at the
heads of people—not their faces. We
also mask people’s bodies and faces in
queue-analysis. Our systems process
data in real-time—for instance, we can
tell how many are in a queue and how
many people have picked up a particular
product on a particular shelf.
CWHK: What are your most popular
products
MM: Products that provide information
on store-traffic. But there is now much
higher uptake in products that help retailers
understand how people interact
with products and shopper demographics.
CWHK: Which country is your biggest
market
MM: Greater China—China and Hong
Kong—is our biggest market. I also
believe Asia offers us huge opportunities—we
have 10 million target stores
in the region where 70 percent of stores
still collect traffic-data manually. In
Hong Kong, 15 percent of stores that
sell luxury goods have automated their
people-counting system. Yet the percentage
is still low among local brands,
even though Hong Kong is a worldleading
retail market.
In China, we have customers that are in
sports retail and luxury-goods. We are
also now targeting health and beauty,
supermarkets, and malls in the country.
Vizualize’s MacMillan: Our products don’t
video-record shoppers or collect their data
CWHK: Who are your customers in
Hong Kong
MM: We can’t name our customers,
but many are inside malls—including
The Landmark, where we’ve installed
around 100 sensors, and Pacific Place,
where we have 120-130 sensors.
CWHK: Do you have a lot of competitors
MM: Many, but product quality varies
greatly. Among our competitors, fewer
than ten offer queue-analysis products.
And fewer than five do shopper-behavior-analysis.
CWHK: What’s Vizualize’s next step
MM: We need strategic investment to
grow the company and gain a stronger
foothold in China. We will also target
segments like hospitality, branchbanking,
and commercial buildings. We
have seen commercial building managers
who want to understand how men
and women react to temperature changes
and how light level could be adjusted
at the same time without people feeling
an impact. 3
20 Computerworld Hong Kong July/August 2011 www.cw.com.hk