The art of lighting up the display case

A popular corporate philosophy and mantra often indoctrinated into new starters and emblazoned on corporate literature is “the customer is king”, however, nowhere is it so passionately applied as it is within retail. Customer shopping habits can often dictate everything from the signs in the car park to the instore layout and produce offered. Numerous studies will advise on how best to attract and retain customers, how to influence a purchase and even though retailers would like to employ each of these tactics, a balance must be struck between these ideas and the retailers own financial and environmental targets. An aspect often overlooked which can help with all these factors is lighting and in particular, display lighting.

Once a shopper is in store, how do you then ensure your produce is showcased to the best advantage? 
From general shelving to refrigeration and freezer display cases, lighting can have a huge impact on the overall feel of an environment and influence the buying experience. Nualight, a specialist of refrigeration display lighting and a pioneer of LED has helped many of world’s leading retailers and refrigeration case manufacturers, build or upgrade their cases with efficient, expertly designed, LED lighting solutions and understands the balance that must be achieved.

There are several factors to be to be considered when selecting lighting for refrigeration display cases and over the years Nualight has advised on many fluorescent to LED transitions. Nualight is able to provide solutions from a comprehensive, market leading, competitive and patented portfolio. The portfolio has tiered family ranges to suit all budgets and requirements from Arctic – a family of LED tubes suitable for retrofit to the highly successful Orion and established Perfino ranges. Perfino, has outlasted competition and remains the industry benchmark as the refrigeration display case range which will lift and enhance a wider range colours across the spectrum creating comparably more vibrant and enticing displays.

Lighting as an art.
Nualight believes that display cases can be a place of colour and contrast and a planned and controlled use of the right light in the space can enhance the customers experience encouraging them to explore and discover the produce in new and exciting ways.

Specialist design and engineering to improve the customer experience.
The energy savings with LED are outstanding, e.g. Orion – a range of high performing horizontal and vertical LED solutions with industry leading efficacies of 125lm/W, which when swapped with fluorescent can achieve up to 90% energy savings whilst directing the light exactly where it is needed, thanks to its specially designed optic. Orion is a good example of how it is possible to make energy savings and simultaneously improve the customer’s buying experience with LED.
As LED becomes more common so do cheap and poorly designed lighting solutions. Even though they use LED; the quality of the light output can negatively impact the buying experience and a poor build quality can quickly mean escalating maintenance costs.

Andrew Cronin, Vice President of Product Research & Development at Nualight explains, “In earlier years, we were called upon to help with inefficient, out of date lighting, however, we are now receiving an increasing number of calls from retailers and case manufacturers asking us to help with a previous LED installation which has not performed as expected. It is an unfortunate position to be in for the customer, they will see the initial energy savings that come with LED, however, if the solution is poorly designed or uses inferior components, you will soon start to see a visible degradation of the light quality and you are back to square one.”Andrew continues, “As much as good lighting will go a long way to encouraging a sale, bad lighting even with LED can have a detrimental consequence.”

When used to good effect, lighting can uplift, create enticing displays and enhance the customers experience but how can you tell that it is working?

At Nualight we have found that customers are rarely able to pinpoint when the lighting has been changed. They will pause, feel that something is different, they will notice produce they had not noticed before, they will spend more time instore perusing and exploring, their mood and behaviour will be more calm and relaxed and more open to the retail or brand experience. So even though customers will not explicitly detail that the lighting is doing its job, in a world where “the customer is king” the balancing act of providing a safe, welcoming and bright atmosphere whilst managing your financial and environmental objectives can be a lot easier when you can make informed decisions about your lighting.