Bethesda’s Brivo is partnering with Urban Outfitters for cloud security

After collaborating with Apple earlier this year, cloud security tech company Brivo just announced another partnership in the consumer space.

This time, the Bethesda, Maryland-based company, is partnering with retail giant Urban Outfitters, whose Philadelphia-headquarted parent company URBN also operates Anthropologie, Free People, Nuuly and more. Brivo will be modernizing the company’s physical security systems for Urban Outfitters distribution centers with its cloud technology. With this partnership, Urban leadership said it was looking for better speed, accessibility and automation while blending in with the unique look of its buildings.

“The foundational layer for them, really, is who has access to the structure, and so for us, this is really a very important customer,” Brivo Chief Marketing Officer Mary Clark told Technical.ly. “This is a really meaningful and one of the most important logistics-focused customers we’re going to be supporting in the coming years.”

Brivo’s technology is based in access — specifically, controlling the doors for almost any type of built structure out there. For a company like Urban, which has 562 stores and 23,000 employees across the country, that data and technology are all centralized in the cloud so every entry and exit can be tracked.

Clark said that retail distribution is an interesting space because brands manage so many different types of technology in inventory, packaging and robotics, among other functions. Using a centralized technology like Brivo can make it straightforward and easy to implement, Clark said.

She particularly cited AI and robotics as a world to watch and one that Brivo is exploring following this partnership — especially in envisioning what access and credentials for robots could look like.

“As we start thinking about robotics and we start thinking about delivery-related use cases, as AI starts to play a bigger role, I’m particularly interested to see what are some of the use cases that they need to solve that maybe we’re not sitting here right now thinking about,” Clark said. “[Urban] is going to be a really great partner for us to understand what those look like in the future.”

This partnership is also helping the company rethink how it works with consumer brands. Earlier this year, Brivo partnered with Apple to create a mobile access badge for the Apple Wallet. In retail, Clark said stealing is a huge problem for stores; Brivo will be looking at more of what it can do on the access control side, especially in video surveillance.

For the Urban partnership, Brivo also had to incorporate design elements that fit in with the brand’s buildings. Given the need to stay in tune with Urban’s facility designs, Clark expects to carry that into the future. She said Brivo will likely be looking at more design-focused approaches going forward, as opposed to pure functionality.

In the meantime, though, she’s hopeful that Brivo can be the best system for Urban Outfitters.

“To continue to thrive as a commercial enterprise, we knew that we had to explore adopting a more comprehensive and user-friendly access control system,” said John Owad, Urban’s director of loss prevention, in a statement. “After encountering limitations with our existing security platform, we felt Brivo was the best partner for the transition. Brivo’s access control provided the perfect solution, offering high-quality hardware and a holistic network that streamlined URBN’s security processes.”