CASE STUDY
Purple WiFi and Cisco
Meraki at Camden Market:
A Hotspot with Top Shops
When Camden Market decided to become the world’s first indoor/outdoor market
Executive Summary
London’s Camden Market became the
world’s first indoor/outdoor market to
offer WiFi. Using Purple WiFi’s cloudbased social software along with Cisco
Meraki for switching and networking,
the market, originally built in the 19th
century, took a big leap into the 21st.
to deploy WiFi, it connected with cloud solution provider Purple WiFi and Cisco
Business Challenges:
Meraki for the ultimate in hotspot software, hardware, security and networking.
• Install access points in a challenging,
diverse, outdoor physical plant to
design a hotspot that would provide
the market with actionable data.
Business Challenge
The new owners of London’s fourth busiest tourist attraction, the historic Camden Market, recognized the
value of WiFi even before they acquired the complex of retail shops, restaurants, pubs and cinemas. Camden
visitors – who come from all over the world – had been asking about WiFi. The tech-savvy owners understood
that turning Camden into a WiFi hotspot would benefit shoppers by enabling them to log in via Facebook,
navigate the market and take advantage of promotions delivered in real time, while providing valuable
consumer insights to Camden about its visitors and their preferences.
“We wanted to bring the market into the 21st century – online and unified,” says Camden’s Head of IT, Jac
Timms. “We wanted WiFi everywhere.” In short, Camden sought to provide the service and in turn get
actionable information back from visitors – information they could use to push relevant promotions directly
• Offer visitors promotions, discounts
and valuable information.
Solution:
•Purple WiFi Guest WiFi: Combined
with Cisco Meraki, this solution allows
customers to log in with ease through
social networks, enabling venues to
deliver branded communications to
present and previous guests. Behind
the scenes, this solution provides a
wealth of analytics about the WiFi
users, such as age, gender, location,
visit frequency, dwell times and more.
from the cloud to shoppers’ smart phones, tablets and laptops.
Business Results:
Camden wanted to implement Meraki for switching, security and hardware devices that are centrally managed
from the cloud. But first it wanted to know how Purple Wifi, the cloud-based WiFi provider and Cisco Preferred
Solution Partner, worked with Merkai and what it offered Camden on top of that – such as social metrics, rich
user data and content filtering. “Purple WiFi helped seal the deal to deploy Meraki and confirm this was our
best path because of how well the two cloud based solutions work,” says Timms. Meraki gives visibility and
control to network administrators without the cost and complexity of controller appliances or overlay
management software. It’s a seamless, elegant cloud-networking solution. As part of its portfolio development,
•Fast deployment with a cloud-based
solution.
•The capacity to tell where visitors to
the market came from, whether they’ve
visited before and where they go.
•The ability to offer relevant, real-time
promotions to visitors based on their
preferences.
Purple WiFi had worked closely with Cisco’s Internet of Everything (IoE) Innovation Centre in London to
integrate and test its solution so it could carry the Cisco Compatible brand. Camden could confidently deploy
Meraki knowing that Purple WiFi had fully verified the platform with Cisco’s technology.
“Meraki is a fantastic solution that
goes hand-in-hand with Purple
WiFi’s software and expertise in
”
— Jac Timms, Head of IT,
cloud-based systems.
Solution
Camden Market
The powerful combination of Purple WiFi Guest WiFi and Cisco Meraki enables Camden to look at the entire
outdoor space as a whole. “The Purple Portal” displays rich analytics that are useful to marketing and
business teams: It shows what countries Camden’s visitors come from as well as the visitors’ Facebook
“likes.” These “social insights” help Camden categorize its visitors and create promotions and discounts in
real time. Camden can tell when someone visits for the first time and when they return; the solution even
tracks visitors as they move around the market, from zone to zone.
There are other vendors in the WiFi space, notes Timms. They look at choke points, entrances, exits,
pathways and floor plans. But they don’t include the social media component. While a few other companies
offer a social media login, “they don’t come close to the Purple WiFi and Meraki solution in terms of the
analytics they offer,” he says.
Because the market – built originally as horse stables in 1854 – is unusually configured, and because
Camden is forbidden to put devices on listed buildings, the deployment required more access points than
had been originally planned. But the installation was smooth from start to finish.
Product List
Business Results
•Cisco Meraki
“We had a successful Meraki installation at a competitive price,” says Timms. While it’s
still too early to calculate an ROI, one immediate benefit was the ability to be quickly up
and running. Although it took some time to calibrate the space and make sure the
devices were all plotting to the map accurately, the agile cloud-based solution requires no
hardware setup. Launching Purple WiFi’s powerful reports and analytics functions required just a few settings
to be configured and added to the Meraki dashboard.
“We can see how many people log in,” says Timms. “We can drive people to the market, to different areas; we
can track them. We can see them in real time through their WiFi after they log in to the Purple Portal. This is
what we envisioned, and this is what we built.”
More Information
To find out more about the Cisco Partner Solution, go to: www.purplewifi.com.
Cisco
Marketplace
Purple WiFi is a cloud-based social WiFi software company with data-capture capabilities that enable clients to
market to their customers, track their movements and more. Purple WiFi works globally with an existing hardware
and Internet connection. Secure and content-filtered, the solution has a simple, social-user login process.
1 Henry Square, 225 Old Street
Tel. +44 333 101 4130
Ashton Under Lyne, OL6 7SR, UK
www.purplewifi.com
Copyright © 2015 Purple WiFi. All rights reserved.
•Purple WiFi Guest WiFi