Established in 1984, Cruise is one of the UK's leading luxury retailers, with a reputation not only for designer brands, but also as a showcase for fresh, innovative fashion. Their stores house a selection of menswear, womenswear, footwear, bags and accessories from some of the world's leading brands.
Operating with formats of larger mainline and smaller specialist stores, Cruise Chester is the company's second stand alone footwear, accessory and bag store, stocking international labels including Gucci, Chloé, Dior, Jimmy Choo, Vivienne Westwood, Dolce and Gabbana and Paul Smith. The timber-framed building developed for the new store dates from 1664 and incorporates many of the site's original features including an Elizabethan façade and a 13th century crypt, which is included as a focal point of the store's retail area. Attention to detail shows throughout every aspect of the store's design, and the implementation is exemplary.
Cruise retail director, Stuart Margetts wanted to ensure that the audio system not only met this store's criteria for style and audio quality, but was scaleable for the differing sizes of future premises. To ensure consistency of the Cruise retail experience, music content was also a key factor and an important part in the decision to choose tsg, who could supply the complete content and delivery package.
A number of loudspeaker systems were short-listed and a unanimous decision was made in favour of the Audio Professional MICROseries, which was favoured for both design and audio quality. With four separate zones, MICROseries also offered a complete electronics and control solution.
The main equipment rack is located in the fourth-floor office and houses the tsg promedia hard disk system. This feeds five rack-mounted Audica MICROzone controller/amplifiers. A single MICROzone is used for each of the four retail zones with a fifth operating as a slave to one of the primary units for driving the larger number of loudspeakers used in the crypt zone.
Although the system is primarily designed for background music, the opening and several subsequent events have involved the system being DJ driven and it has proved capable of suitably and reliably 'rocking' the store.
(Jim Evans)
