The Minardi Blog

Econo-Lite Products, the jewelry lighting division of Eco-Lite Products, attended The Smart Jewelry Show at the Navy Pier in Chicago April 13-15 displaying their energy-efficient, product-enhancing lighting for jewelry stores.

A prominent theme of the 2012 show was ‘How to Properly Light a Jewelry Store.’  Howard Gurock, Co-President of Eco-Lite Products, was asked about the right and wrong way to make use of jewelry store lighting design.

There are several ways to illuminate a jewelry store and according to Gurock, diamonds and other gems react differently to particular sources of lighting.  These distinct reactions can direct a customer’s attention to a desired area of a jewelry store or particular part of a product showcase.

Jewelry Store Lighting Expert Says to Light for Diamonds

In the interview Gurock says, “If you look for cheap deals or just assume the brightest lights are best, you’re likely to end up spending more in the long run or making your merchandise look poor.”  Instead, Gurock suggests ‘lighting for diamonds’ adding, “If you light for diamonds, everything else will survive. If you light for everything else, your diamonds will die. So light for your diamonds.”

He also notes that brighter is not better and in most cases, LED lighting will create the most scintillation in diamonds.  LED lights are also the most energy-efficient, using 40-80% less energy.

Good lights can be more expensive, but there are other areas where jewelry store owners can save.  The best way to ensure dollars are being spent wisely, according to Gurock, is to talk to someone with expertise in lighting and ask them the best ways to be effectively and efficiently light a jewelry store.

To read the full interview on jewelry store lighting with Howard Gurock, please visit http://www.jewelry-lighting.com/20120516-jewelry-store-lighting-design-tips-from-an-expert/

Written by Josh Wimmer for Smartjewelryshow.com

When it comes to lighting your store, don’t go it alone. If you look for cheap deals or just assume the brightest lights are best, you’re likely to end up spending more in the long run or making your merchandise look poor, said Econo-Lite‘s Howard Gurock at The SMART Show on Sunday. You’re better off working with a lighting expert who knows the jewelry industry.

In a Q&A with Larry Johnson of display maker Pacific Northern, Gurock shared some tips on how to make your lighting really shine:

• A rule of thumb: If you light for your diamonds, everything else will survive. If you light for everything else, your diamonds will die. So light for your diamonds.
• Brighter isn’t better. You don’t want your lighting to be so overpowering that the jewelry looks different when you take it out of the case. Your in-case lighting should make your diamonds sparkle, and the overhead lights should be consistent with that look.
• LEDs create the most scintillation in diamonds and are also the most energy-efficient form of lighting. And they’re now powerful enough to be used as overhead lighting, although metal halides may still be your best bet for overhead.
• A quality overhead light should cost you $80-$100. Quality in-case lighting should cost you $80-$120 per foot, or a bit more than $40 per foot for LED tape lighting.
• Avoid online discount lighting merchants, who often sell poor-quality products that won’t last as long as promised or will provide inconsistent color or brightness. Also avoid home-improvement stores. “You can go to Home Depot and talk to the lighting expert there, but the day before, he was the plumbing expert,” Gurock said. Moreover, those stores are selling residential lights, meant to be used for maybe three hours at a time. They’re not built to meet retailers’ needs.
• Check your warranties. If your warranty on an overhead light isn’t for at least five years, be careful.
• When you contact a lighting company, there are certain questions they should ask if they’re any good: What is your ceiling height? What type of merchandise are you selling? What kind of cases do you have? What kind of look are you going for?
• If you’re building or remodeling your store and you provide your lighting company with a good floor plan, a knowledgeable expert should be able to use it to lay out a lighting plan, so you can see where your lights will go and how much your lighting setup will cost. If you can’t get your lighting company a floor plan, send them photos of your showroom.

Good lighting is expensive, sure, but trying to do it on the cheap is just money down the drain. “The best way to save money,” Gurock said, “is to talk to someone who has expertise in lighting and ask them where you could cut back.”

The June 2011 edition of SALON TODAY featured its 2011 Salons of the Year.  The process of selecting the winners started with SALON TODAY editors and designers reviewing each of the entries, then a panel of editors and art directors evaluated each entry in greater detail and chose a group of finalists.  Thereafter, a panel of outside expert judges scrutinized and evaluated the salons scoring them in six different categories one of which was salon lighting.

Minardi Color Perfect Lighting by Eco-Lite Products, was installed throughout the entire salon, or in select areas such as the styling/color areas, in six of the top twenty 2011 Salons of the Year.  These 2011 Salons of the Year winners were:

• 27 Hampton Salon (Southampton, NY)
• Blo Salon (Shelby Township, MI)
• Salon Debonaire (Richmond, VA)
• Sam Brocato (New York, NY)
• Santo Salon & Spa (Pepper Pike, OH)
• Teeze Salon of New Jersey (Lyndhurst, NJ)

See photos of the SALON TODAY winning salons online.

Along with the famous Angus M Salon in Beverly Hills, CA, which was a 2010 Salon of the Year, the 2011 Salons of the Year now bring the total to seven Salons of the Year using Minardi Color Perfect Lighting.

World renowned colorist Beth Minardi was thrilled with the Minardi Color Perfect Lighting Salon winners.  “SALON TODAY is a wonderful resource for serious salon professionals!  We are so pleased that many of their SALON of the YEAR winners use MINARDI COLOR PERFECT LIGHTING.  Great salons and great salon clients deserve nothing but the very best.  And, when we can see EXACTLY what we are doing, we can deliver EXACTLY the results great colorists are expected to deliver.  Let that great light shine on your beautiful color creations!”

Minardi Salon Lighting Blended Seamlessly Into Design of Winning Salons

Jeff Gasman, Co-President of Eco-Lite Products, observed that each of the six 2011 winners had a unique design that “incorporated our lighting into that design seamlessly.  Not only did these salons create perfect environments for coloring and styling, they did it in an eco-friendly manner which will save them thousands of dollars a year in electrical costs.”

We work very closely with Salon Designers, Architects and owners in order to help turn their visions into reality, commented Howard Gurock, Co-President of Eco-Lite Products.  Salon owners are realizing more and more that lighting is a critical element to a successful salon that cannot be ignored or put as the last line on the budget.  Gurock, who was recently named to a panel of the Beauty Industry’s top experts, said that the advances in technology will “provide us with the ability to deliver salon lighting that is superior in tone and color at a fraction of the energy used in most salons today.”

Eco-Lite Products along with Beth and Carmine Minardi are pleased to announce that the Minardi Color Perfect Lighting system is now lighting up 400 salons nationwide. The cutting edge salon lights were designed specifically for salons by world-renowned colorist Beth Minardi and celebrity stylist Carmine Minardi and are manufactured by Eco-Lite Products.

Beth Minardi is quoted, “I’m thrilled that 400 salons across America have turned on the lights – Minardi Color Perfect lights!  I also work behind the chair every day, so I know how important it is to accurately see and evaluate the color and styles we create. ”

Upon launching in 2009, the lighting system quickly garnered industry-wide attention and won the prestigious International Beauty Industry Innovator Award at the 2009 and 2010 America’s Beauty Show®. Just two years later, salons across the country are raving about it and designers have begun specifying Minardi Color Perfect Lighting into their salon design plans as well.

Multiple Options with Minardi Color Perfect Lighting for Salons

Minardi Color Perfect lighting is comprised of three different fixtures each of which has a specific function for a salon. Salons can greatly benefit from using one or all three of the lights.

The task lights, which are a mere 18 watts and use state of the art LED technology, create a 3’ to 4’ circle of light around the stylists chair and project a perfect color making hair look the same both inside and outside of the salon.

The mirror light, which comes in two sizes and can be wall mounted or mounted to a ceiling in a pendant style, uses between 7 and 14 watts of power, is essential because it eliminates circles under the eyes while adding a warm glow to the skin and an overall healthy look to the complexion warmth to the skin. This is the light the client sees as they are sitting in the chair.

The ambient lighting provides general lighting for the salon. There are several energy efficient options all of which spread an even canopy of bright soothing light.  Salons using fluorescent lighting that struggle with the shadows and poor color quality that fluorescents are known for as well as salons using the extremely hot and inefficient halogen lights will welcome the brilliance and tone that is emitted by the ambient lighting.

We are “… excited to see the growth of Minardi Color Perfect Lighting … our company, along with Beth and Carmine Minardi, spent countless hours designing, testing and modifying these lights until they produced the perfect balance of color, tone and power” said Howard Gurock, co-owner, Eco-Lite Products.  “Salons across the country call us every day to thank us for helping to make their salons more successful and we take a lot of pride in knowing that in addition to helping the salons we are also helping the environment” said Jeff Gasman, co-owner, Eco-Lite Products.

Boutique retailers Del Sol and Cariloha companies have selected Eco-Lite Products™, the country’s leading lighting manufacturer for jewelry stores, beauty salons, optical stores and other retail environments, as their lighting partners for their new and remodeled stores. Del Sol, a retailer of more than 20,000 skus of colorful tees, polos, shorts, sweat shirts, hooded zips that change color, has 128 stores with expansion to 155 planned over the next two years.

“At Del Sol, our customers know us for our color-change vibrancy. No other retailer has as many ink variations and such ink intensity—we literally have hundreds,” says Scott Brady, vice president of communications. Adds Jamie Seals, Del Sol store designer, “Because that color-change feature is so important to our customers, it’s vital that we display our merchandise in color-perfect lighting, and Eco-Lite Products is the first company to make that possible, creating the ideal, inviting, modern colorful environment that really makes our merchandise pop. In addition, it ensures that our customers look their best while trying on our merchandise,”

“Lighting is extremely important to us, not only for the visual merchandising benefits, but for its technical properties, as well,” say Brittany Braithewaite, Del Sol store design manager. “It’s critical that our lights protect our color-changing products within our store environment, so that they are not exposed to UV rays. We also want energy-efficient lighting that both helps the environment, while significantly decreasing our lighting bill every month. We turned to Eco-Lite Products not only for their high-quality, eco-friendly lighting solutions, but for their high level of customer service, as well.”

Del Sol’s sister company Cariloha, the first retailer of casual clothing, home goods, hand bags and jewelry made entirely from bamboo fabric, is also partnering with Eco-Lite Products. With thousands of skus, the company has seven stores with plans for 20 to 25 in the next two years.

Color Perfect LED Lighting

“We looked for the perfect lighting to illuminate our all-bamboo stores and enhance our clean, organized, interactive and friendly environment,” says Sabrina Westbrook, director of Cariloha store design. “We want our stores to ‘sing’ with brightness, and Eco-Lite Products gives us that ‘WOW factor’ we were seeking. In addition, as an all-bamboo store, Eco-Lite Products fits our eco-friendly brand story perfectly with fixtures that have a longer life span and a lighting system that uses much less electricity and produces less heat every single month. As a result, what we save on lighting and cooling allows us to lower costs to end customers, while giving them a completely eco-friendly shopping experience Eco-Lite Products’ lights are very easy to install. The team has been very helpful. Hands down, they’re one of the best vendors we have ever worked with.”

In one success story, the company remodeled a store in St. Maarten and installed    Eco-Lite Products’ lighting. Upon completion of the build-out, no one recognized the previously dark, dreary space. One customer said, “It’s as if the sunshine has been turned on.”

Says Howard Gurock, co-president of Eco-Lite Products, “Sabrina Westbrook, director of Cariloha store design, challenged us to create high-quality, high-powered lighting that not only used less energy than conventional retail store lighting but did not cause the colors in the clothes to activate inside the store. Del Sol has a unique patented process that causes clothing to change colors when exposed to the light from the sun. We created a special lens that prevented the clothing from changing colors indoors. Now, we are developing an LED light fixture that can perform just as well as the original light we created while saving even more energy. In the Cariloha stores, our expertise in color-perfect lighting helped us create lighting that enhanced the beauty of the clothing and other merchandise in those stores all while remaining eco-friendly, which is very important to the Cariloha and Del Sol brands.”

Adds Eco-Lite Products co-president Jeff Gasman, “Del Sol’s commitment to being eco-friendly is something that we also share, which is why we work so hard at creating energy efficient lighting that not only saves money via the reduction in electrical use but actually works in demanding retail environments. Huge energy reductions would be rendered worthless if the lighting used didn’t enhance what was being sold, which is why we produce lighting that accomplishes both.”

About Del Sol

Established in 1994, Del Sol combined science and sunshine to create the world’s first T-shirt that changes color in sunlight. Since then, Del Sol has grown to become the world’s largest retailer of merchandise that changes color in the sun, and the Caribbean’s largest clothing retailer. It’s also one of the most highly promoted merchants on board Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Princess, Disney, Celebrity and Norwegian Cruise Lines. Today, the company is soaking up the sun and sharing the fun in over 100 Del Sol stores in 21 countries. For more information about Del Sol’s culture, products and stores, visit http://www.delsol.com .

About Cariloha

Cariloha offers an exclusive line of bamboo clothing and textiles using its exclusive process for taking a hard bamboo and turning it into a soft, comfy T-shirt. As the store sales associates say: “Live Natural, Stay Cool—Wear Bamboo.” Cariloha’s aim is to give customers the opportunity— advertently or not—to keep the world green and clean. Visit http://www.cariloha.com/ .

About Eco-Lite

In 1980, Eco-Lite Products started making lights for jewelry stores—perhaps the most challenging of all retail environments. Today, the company is the leading supplier of energy-efficient, product-enhancing lighting to that marketplace, as well as to beauty salons, art galleries, eyewear retailers and other environments where perfect lighting is critical to the bottom line and eco-friendly practices translate into both good will and good business. To learn more, call 800-345-9652 or visit http://www.eco-lite.com .