Follow the light

As I round the corner of my normally dim local high street with my wife, in pursuit of our Friday night takeaway, I spy an almost blindingly bright apparition; is it some sort of weird urban lighthouse? Is at an alien invasion? No, its LED-lit signage!

As I hurry over to the pizza shop and stare in wonder at how the letters glow with an eerie brilliance, my wife hangs her head in shame, as once again her husband has transformed into a sign geek. I remain unabashed in my praise of the shining beacon to the staff inside—who look at me as if my head has just floated away from my shoulders. I extol how, not only the shining shop front, but the atmospheric interior LED lighting and shining menu boards are sure to banish their competition to the fast food scrapheap.

After some suitable chastisement by my better half we leave with our two 10" Hawaiians, but I cannot resist stopping and staring one more time at how the green, red and and white acrylic letters just seem to ‘pop’—offset by the cool glint of their polished aluminium casings.

In all seriousness, the capabilities of LEDs as a sign lighting solution seem to be reaching new heights. And while LED may still not quite have reached the mystique created by neon, they are creating their own cult of chic.

Getting to grips

While the use of LED lighting is now second nature to medium- to large-sized sign-makers, suppliers are still reporting across the board that smaller and more traditionally-focused companies are struggling to get to grips with it.

There are two main problems highlighted. The first is the technology is still too expensive to pass onto their average small-unit customer. The second is they are often not comfortable with professionally integrating LEDs into lettering or light boxes.

Ashby Trade Sign Supplies’ sales manager, Penny Paylor, argues this does not need to remain the case: “Sign-makers often say, ‘we don’t understand it’, when in fact they do not need to understand it. If they can fit a tray, they can fit an LED illuminated tray, it really is no more difficult.

“It is also a massive profit opportunity for the sign-maker and they will just miss out on it if they do not investigate it properly. This is because the cost to them of producing an illuminated sign is perhaps £50 to £100 different, but they can sell it on at so much more value to the end-user.”

Paylor continues: “We have had some exciting developments in our product line recently, introducing a brand new Ashby branded low-cost LED series with an RGB colour changing option. This was developed directly in response to customer demand and is aimed at the smaller and more economy-focussed sign-maker, who are most concerned with intense brightness and low wattage as the system’s main strength.”

Paylor continues: “Our focus really has been to create a product that allows sign-makers to get into using LEDs with their customers, without the price of top-end models being prohibitive. This is not to say the LEDs are not good quality, but as technology has moved on this strata has necessarily become much lower in price as more energy efficient models have come onto the market.”

What’s hot?

Perhaps the biggest influencing factors in the popularity of LEDs has been the fact that they achieve high brightness for less power consumption, and as a result for much less heat output, than peer technologies. 

One company that has been pushing hard to stay on the cutting edge of developments is Surrey-based Bright Green Technology. It has moved from distribution to direct supply through its new web-based customer resource. According to head of product at Bright Green Technology, Terry Cattle, the thinking behind the new portal, which contains an online shop, is that it contains anything and everything a sign-maker could possibly need for a job. This ranges from product detailed specification sheets to application examples, backed up by a direct telephone line to deal with complex enquiries.

“People are so much more aware now of LED products and their benefits. So what they really want is direct access to somebody to talk frankly with them and give them the information they need to get the best out of our technology,” says Cattle, adding: “A consequence of this is that we have been able to highlight the benefits of products such as flood lighting for sign hoardings and fascias, which we saw a lot of interest in at Sign and Digital UK 2012. Another important area of demand which is continuing to grow is light boxes in retail areas, which are switching en masse from florescent to LEDs. Elements such as the new web-based shop allows us to react to these trends much more quickly than we could with a distributor.”

In regards to trends, Ashby’s Paylor says the greatest demand for Ashby LEDs is for use in fret cut lettering to light up an acrylic face. She stresses the technical difficulty of specifying LEDs and fitting them into sign lettering, light boxes or other signage applications is far easier than many think. She also believes a large proportion of the sign trade are unnecessarily leaving themselves out in the cold when it comes to LED work, explaining that Ashby can give training that quickly get installers up to speed.

Another important trend, and one that Ashby is tapping into, is products that already come pre-fabricated with LEDs.

“As we have a range of other trade products, we can very easily and expertly fret cut out the letters on a tray and then team up our LEDs and create a complete solution for the sign-maker that is hesitant about installing them. The key is to make it is as simple as possible at the point of installation, and so the only real challenge is the fixing and hooking up the 12v cable to the mains,” continues Paylor.

Ashby is also continuing to develop its range of top-end LED solutions, utilising well respected brands such as Sloan to cater for this demand spectrum. She points out though that lower-cost options still have a five-year lifespan at full brightness. This is an important consideration, as most standard signs will be replaced within this time frame, and so dimming after five years is not a problem.

In search of solutions

The rapid growth of LED supply companies is a testament to how lucrative the market is. An example of this is Firstlite LED Systems, which since it was founded 18 months ago as a stand alone company born out of First Fix Plastics, has already become a big player.

“When we started, we had one module and were relying on other parties for a more extensive supply. Today we have a full range of systems so that whatever the situation is we can provide a solution for it,” says David Holmes, managing director of Firstlite.

He continues: “For example, there used to be an issue with spotting when you went down to 50mm, we now have a solution for this. There was also a problem when you went over 200mm, because the light wasn’t powerful enough, we now have a solution for that.”

Bright Green’s Cattle emphasises that this pursuit of new solutions is integral to being a supplier today: “We put a budget aside as part of continual product development to help with staying on top of the solutions race.

“The technology is moving so quickly that you have to have this focus as part of your business. We also regularly go to meet with component manufacturers to see how we can adapt and make the most of the latest developments. A big source of impetus though is our customers, as they will pose us a challenge and then working with them we come up with a new solution which we can then integrate into our products and services.”

Firstlite’s Holmes agrees that what excites him and motivates his staff is this pursuit of finding the perfect solution for each problem and need from sign-makers. With this in mind he points out that the larger companies are ‘completely au fait’ with the technology now and as such make up a large proportion of Firstlite’s customers.

This should not necessarily be the case, as the level of technical skill that smaller sign-makers posses make them fully capable of learning how to integrate LEDs from scratch—rather than going for often more costly pre-fabricated solutions.

Holmes continues: “We get out to small- and medium-sized companies to debunk any mysticism about the technology and explain it, giving them the ability to do it themselves. We will hold their hands to make sure they get it right until they can do it themselves, and going forward we are going to have a series of dedicated training days each year free of charge at our head office.”

Holmes also agrees with Paylor when he argues that because of the expense of some prefabricated units and the perceived difficulties of LEDs, there is still a lot of florescent used unnecessarily. As a result, he says many sign-makers are excluding themselves from using products that could allow them to tap into a growing demand for LED sign and even architectural products.

He also stresses that when a sign-maker does some training with a supplier and integrates LEDs themselves, they can avoid ‘paying way over the odds’ for a project. Firstlite has also interestingly just introduced a five-year warranty on some of its own branded products, giving the quality assurance of more expensive big name brands. And with Firstlite’s products ending up in the signs of brands such as Dixons, Primark, Tesco and Boots, it seems there is confidence in its promises.

Holmes continues: “In addition to the last three modules we have brought out, we are in talks with manufacturers to achieve units with greater energy savings and longer lives. We are also already investing in the next generation of products under development from our own suppliers and are very loyal to them. This is massively important to us,  as we have a track history with them dating back more than ten years, we can be confident in their capabilities.

“We could just go and find ultra-cheap products and sell them for a fraction of the price that we sell ours for, but we know they are not good enough to last. The main strength of LEDs is that they are put in place and they are maintenance free and they save you money over the duration of the sign.
So when you have a product that isn’t to that standard it will just be in need of continual maintenance and there is no point in switching from fluorescent, it just defeats the whole purpose.”

Holmes argues the ‘myth’ is that a really bright LED is a really good LED. He says this is not the case, but rather that the LED is just run at maximum power and burns out very quickly.

“Genuinely some of these poor quality LEDs can just go in a month. Our warranty covers 50,000 hours of continuous illumination and that is what we are prepared to back as long as they are fitted within our specified parameters,” he concludes.

Holmes gives justification for his ethos, giving an example of a recent major retrofit of LED modules in place of fluorescent tubes to the value of £30,000. He claims the investment will be repaid within nine months due to the energy savings.

Lighting the way

This focus on innovation and pushing the boundaries of LED technology and integrated products is very much shared by Bright Green’s Cattle. He explains how products such as the Bright Green Matrix have also been put to use in diverse applications such as down lighting in an African gold mine, which needed ultra low-energy lighting to conserve generator fuel. Cattle also says Bright Green’s products that use focused lenses are seeing a lot of use in double sided lighting applications. This is because they can be fitted to the edge of a graphic and uniformly light both sides—negating the need for expensive double sided interior LEDs or florescent tubing.

“There is a big opportunity for sign-makers to look beyond their traditional areas. Lighting has become much more important to end-users as they want to illuminate not just signs, but displays and individual products to try and create, ‘stand out’. And because it is low voltage they do not have to be qualified electricians to do this type of work, and so can easily add it to their skills portfolio,” emphasises Cattle.

This is a point that Firstlit’s Holmes and Ashby’s Paylor both say needs to be take heed of. They highlighted the fact that more sign-makers are beginning to move more strongly into LED use for point-of-sale work to diversify and increase revenue. Another important point is that when it comes to LEDs , as sign-makers have such a diverse skill set, they could also be doing interior shop and retail lighting when they do a sign project.

Cattle continues: “In relation to specific products we have seen a massive take up of our Bright Green Light Panel. This is because it is so thin and gives a really bright, beautiful, even and atmospheric light. Some people put them in light boxes, but they are also great for more diverse applications such as shelving lighting—we have even seen it used for a the full top and side of the bar at Goodwood race course.”

Firstlite’s Holmes argues that light sheet type solutions are still the preserve of the ‘top 5 percent of end-users’. He highlights however that this will not be the case for long and the next three to five years will see LEDs become the complete ‘staple’ lighting solution for the sign trade. As a result, he predicts more exotic LED products will then come within the reach of a far greater swathe of the sign trade.

Case in point

As me and my wife meandered home from our expedition, I look back and realise that of the five fast food takeaways on the high street, only ours is full to capacity, with the other four seeing barely a dribble of custom. The equation is simple; better lighting solutions make signs and products look better and attract more business. Telling potential customers about this fact and the impact today’s diverse LED sign-lighting technology could have on their business, could also see yours benefit too.