Reality check Why a great lighting product does not guarantee a sale

This worthy cause has required me to take a step in a new direction, similar to the journey that purchasers of lighting technology have to take to justify their decisions.

 

The top level decision is quite easy; the government is offering a generous renewables heat incentive (RHI) payment to ensure a relatively quick payback. However, I still have to fund the considerable upfront capital cost. From here on in it becomes a bit grey. 

 

Loads of companies are leaping on the bandwagon, offering a glittering array of equipment, sources of funding and all served up with a smorgasbord of baffling terms, new regulations, huge differences in cost and hoops to jump through to get the RHI payment. The advice you are offered is confusing, contradictory and often dangerous. It has taken me months to find a supplier that I trust to deliver the project, that employs its own plumbers, has a proven track record and can answer questions of a very specific but essentially practical nature.

 

This probably sounds familiar to many of our readers looking to invest in lighting upgrades. The lighting market is a bit like a restaurant with an extensive menu, too much choice means you do nothing or default back to the things you know and trust. I see this from both sides of the fence.

 

Earlier this week I was speaking to a sales guy from one of the newer entrants to the lighting market, he was complaining that customers are taking ages to make up their minds, even when presented with leap-off-the-page value propositions, a raft of funding options and cast iron warranties. The challenge was, I said, that the last lighting person who visited the customer probably had much the same story and perhaps he was from a less reputable source. Even worse, the customer could have already been hoodwinked once and learned an expensive lesson.

 

The stalwarts of the lighting industry might sit back and relax at the thought that their new competitors are struggling to make headway with some major opportunities, but all is not rosy for them. I also spoke a few weeks ago with a major end user, who wants to do an exterior lighting upgrade. He was struggling to get a sensible payback from his usual trusted supply base, and had recently had a major set of LED driver failures from that same trusted supplier. The result is that the project won’t happen. At Lux we have bench tested many of the products from the newer entrants to the market, and many of them offer exceptional performance at aggressive market-enabling prices, easily enough to break the stalemate on the larger projects that are waiting in the wings.

 

However, as I’ve found out in my biomass journey, a great product doesn’t get you the sale. You need the feet on the street and the support structures to deal with the many application-focused questions that have to be answered to turn a great valuation proposition to a real world live installation. It is be is wrapped up in the cost of many lighting fixtures. Perhaps it is time to open up the can of worms that has haunted this industry for many years and split out the design and specification from the supply of the product. It is common to go this route for new build, but rare for energy retrofits and refurbishment.

 

We are starting to see a new breed of consultancies that will project manage smaller energy performance-type contracts, choosing products based upon the needs of the project. This could be the answer the new entrants need to make a breakthrough – but as ever, will end users be prepared to pay for good advice upfront?