A leading 3D sensor provider for the gaming industry penetrates the Retail Loss Prevention market

Situation:
A 3D sensor provider is an expert at hand gesture recognition. The company becomes the major technology provider of a leading game console brand, but the competition in the gaming industry is very aggressive and the company is forced to sell at very low margins.

Challenge:
The company was seeking for other target markets or applications, where their offering could be sold at both high volumes and higher margins than in the gaming industry. They were open for developing any required software application but not modifying the hardware, which was too expensive and long process.

Solution:
The growth management consulting project started with identifying other applications where reliable hand gesture could be needed. After reviewing many potential market segments and use cases, it appeared that there's a big unresolved issue at the retail market of detecting frauds at retail store checkouts. Almost 50% of retail loss happens at checkouts, both by customers and by employees. Analyzing hand activities at the checkout area can reliably detect most of the fraud patterns. As a result, the company had quickly developed an application and demonstrated the solution to the retail loss prevention community.

Benefit:
The 3D sensor company had an alternative to the gaming market. With this new potential, the company not only could develop the new offering to the retail market, but also was in a better position with its customers and investors.