When it comers to growth trends, typically the more sophisticated marketers
of technical products designed to serve business-to-business industries tend
to be at or near the cutting edge of what’s hot – and what’s most likely to
generate increased sales.
This is no different in the electrical, lighting and controls industries. And
for that reason it pays to keep a watchful eye on A) innovative product devleopers,
and B) the future trend prognosticators that product developers pay attention
to. Both can have a direct impact on what your customers want, need and buy.
When it comes to green building and energy-efficient technologies, the trend
watchers are loudly predicting continued growth and adoption of greener, more
energy-efficient localized codes and legislation, construction methods and tools,
and economic drivers that will continue to increase consumer demand for Green
Electrical. All this spells a bright future for innovation by the developers
of increasingly better energy-saving products, sytems and technologies.
Of course this begs the question can the distribution channel keep up with
the flow of “new-and-improved” energy-efficient products? This thorny question
has come up repeatedly during my five years of reporting on our industry.
Manufacturers continuously strive to develop the better mousetrap that will
appeal to end user customers, ring up stellar sales and increase their market
share. All this innovation means that each year distributors are expected to
familiarize themselves with thousands of new product offerings, compare the
virtues of competitive products, and become totally fluent on the very latest
product capabilities, features and benefits. As a marketer who has spent over
30 years in the B2B trenches, I say “good luck!”
Distributors must do the best that they can in order to compare new product
offerings and recognize their potential marketability. Today, few segments of
the industry are generating as much product innovation as the energy-efficient
lighting and lighting controls categories. With dozens of companies from global
brands to entrepreneurial new comers introducing a barrage of refined technical
solutions, the only way the beleagured distributor can hope to manage the flood
of innovation is to designate a team of dedicated energy efficiency technology
experts within their sales organization who by training, apptitude and professional
passion have the determination and skills to keep on top of the avalanche of
news.
Over the next few weeks I hope to present a snippet of the current innovation
activity – both in the form of the projected trends shaping energy efficiency,
and some of the newer product solutions that may become the next big seller.
Here are some intial samplings in no particular order:
1. Despite higher intial product costs, wireless
lighting controls are growing as a percentage of the overall controls market.
All the big players are onboard with a growing collection of wireless systems
that provide simplified retrofit installation without breaking through walls,
running cable and connecting devices. This trend seems to be picking up momentum.
2. Manufacturers subscribing to the EnOcean-based
wirless technology continue to deliver new sensors and switches for a broad
variety of applications that are based on the energy harvesting batteryless
platform that converts ambient solar, thermo, and motion energy into useable
electrical energy that powers building energy management systems. To date manufacturers
have developed “450 different EnOcean-based interoperable devices that have
been installed into more than 100,000 buildings worldwide” (www.enocean.com
).
3. Manufacturers continue to address integrated
energy management and lighting controls in an effort to simplify their application
and installation. One recent example of this approach is Leviton’s GreenMAX™
Relay Control Panel line which attempts to combine the versatility of modular
design, robust SCCR rating, daylighting capability and smart metering in a single
“cost-effective lighting management solution” (www.leviton.com/GreenMAX
).
4. Many smaller innovators continue to develop excellent green electrical
solutions that make sense energy-wise and financially. One of these, The Green
Savings Company offers the T5 Retrofit Kit which “has taken the best qualities
of the T5 lamp and married it with a revolutionary technology” as a plug and
play application that they claim can be installed in minutes. The T5 Retrofit
Kit consists of a self-ballasted T5 lamp, reflector, and adapter that fit into
existing standard T8 or T12 fixtures by passing the existing ballast. The company
claims the high lumen output allows delamping each fixture for considerable
energy savings (www.t5retrofit.com
).
We’ll continue to cover some of the newer Green Electical innovations in a
series of reports.