Christian, Stefan, thank you so much for agreeing to take me
through your customer experience centre.
Really excited to go through and basically build my own knowledge
on what lighting is and how it has an impact on associates and
the customer experience. But can you take me through, you
know how we're going to go through the the customer
experience centre today? Absolutely.
We will bring you, Alex and the POD audience to a lighting
journey. And where we start here in our
black box, we're starting off off showing the fundamental
aspects and the secret of light, actually the power the light can
bring into a space. And then the next stop will
actually be layers of light using different kind of layers,
setting the right mood. And we will then focus on the
grocery sector and we'll then go ahead talking about.
The possibilities we can create to communicate with light, we
are making a piece of art. Like it or not, you know,
lighting is art. Lighting is art.
Actually, it's not this. It's not this.
It could be this. It's absolutely.
But here's more showing different modules, so to speak.
Oh, light is art. Good.
Good description, Alex. Brilliant.
So, Stefan, what are we going to go?
Through today, today we are going to go through energy
efficiency and energy cost. And how you can make a big
impact on that, which is actually a big part of the
store's operational expenditures.
I will also talk about how important it is.
To take care. Of the right lighting for the
staff, the store associates. How we can reduce discomfort
there for them? So where are we going to go
first? Now, Alex, we go to the black
box. We're starting off there.
Perfect. OK, so Alex?
Let me show you what we got here.
We are inside now, what we call the black room or the black
boxes. I think this black box, we will
show you the top secret of what we can do with lighting.
I mean, lighting itself is not a secret, but it kept the secret
and it's belongs to its contents and the relation to that to us
human beings. Yeah.
So what I want you to show now is the possibilities we can
create in a retail space. To announce and expand the
shopping experience from a lighting perspective.
So let's start talking about light level.
That's the first step here we're talking about light level and
what you can see here now is different kind of feelings and
atmosphere. And you can also see that I have
this make my decision now where to put the highest light level.
It means also that the adaptation for your eyes will
automatically be. Where we have the light to spot,
yeah. And it doesn't mean that we
don't want to sell the all the other items.
Yeah. It's more defining where to
look. So you're focusing the key
products here basically through light?
I focusing on the key products to make sure that you see them
when you're entering the store. Yeah, because I want you to see
them. Yeah.
And therefore I also, I have to dim down a little bit in the
surroundings. Yeah.
Doesn't mean that they are not. I don't want you to make.
A purchase for those goods. But it means that I want you to
put focus where it's need, where it's needed on these three top
products which is shown here, understood and and it and it
draws my eyes to the paintbrushes.
I'm thinking I didn't want paintbrush, but now I want a
paintbrush. Now you need a paintbrush among
all others things in the store. I forget those green vases.
I want that paintbrush. So that's light level and this
room we can actually show different kind of applications
and you know visual appearance and so on.
And the next Phase I want to guide you through is the
combination between warm and cold which I described here.
Here we have a quite cool colour temperature on those rings and
to make it a little bit more cozy I.
Suddenly needs to, of course, dim down.
What do you call it as in like between the two shades of light
I can see it. What is that?
What one's warm and one's? I would say one is warm and one
is cool. Is there a technical?
Name for that. Actually, Kelvin temperature is
the technical name. OK, good.
So that the cold one has 6000 Kelvin cold temperature.
Yeah. And the warm one is has 2700
Kelvin. Got you.
And the combination between those two I would say is the
fundamental aspects of light in any circumstances.
But if you want to create a warm atmosphere you do.
That's easy list to also adding some cool colour points, but
then you have a relation to warmth in the quite more
efficient way. So for it for this case, for
example, I had quite cool warm colour temperature nowadays and
I want instead having a quite. Blue feeling in totally in this
room. Yeah.
So I add some blue light here, which you can see Now go ahead.
So now the combination between the blue and the warmth gives me
a quite good relations like the sky in the sorry, the sky in the
sun outside, quite close, connection in between warm.
The next thing I want to show you now is actually how.
The light in the store creates modern atmosphere compared to
what I'm using. For example here I want to have
this warm ring and then I add in spotlights and I add in the
spotlights in the certain in a certain area which is actually
not needed. I have the light here, but I
don't have any kind of light in my applications.
So what I do instead is that I of course need.
I'd like a little bit more on the vertical surface.
It will just announce the, the vertical surfaces to create such
atmosphere, which is needed for the good, yeah, not for the
room, yeah. And that's.
So merchandisers must love the fact that you can bring to life
different colors in their product then?
Exactly, that's true. So, and especially the the the
direction of the light, the amount of the light and the.
The type of light if it is ambience or directional light,
yeah that creates the whole sense.
Yeah. So Alex the last thing I want to
show you now in the black box is actually color reproductions,
how light color in combination with physical color can change
totally the environment. What we see in front of us now
is quite white collar natural white color.
So I am now will address to a more.
Fixed color, Yeah, monochromatic color.
And you can see also on the colors now that they did totally
changed tremendously the atmosphere depending on how much
content from the light. Yeah, you really saw the greens
picking up a little. Lose exactly.
Once again you see how the picks up.
So if there are no relations in between the light colors and
physical colors. There are no lights to reflect
and you can actually see also that some of the colors will
totally appears differently. So do you do you work with
visual design people to sort of help them understand which
colors are going to bring out the best or the most vibrant
environments? I would say it's a part of the
lighting design process. Definitely.
It's a part of the process to guide the clients picking the
right light. And then we see color light as a
trend, it will come Now once again color light has been a
trend here and there, but now it's a trend again.
And we see that that will have a deep impact on the customers
experience. And therefore also we need to
learn our customers how to use or the clients how to use color
light because it had will have a deep impact on on on the
appearance and and the visual quality of the room.
So Christian, what? What are we looking at here?
Alex here. I'm going to take you to a
journey when I will explain the layers of light, the importance
of choosing the right level and the right layer of light in
different applications. Now we stand in grocery, so we
are going to talk about grocery lighting.
Yeah. So first of all we can talk
about the ambience, actually the base when we place the light, so
if we switched off. The accents, more or less.
All of the accents in the store. We will see that.
What's an accent? Accent is actually the
spotlight's effect when we're highlighting the product.
Oh, wow. Right.
OK. So now we take down and only
talking about the ambience. What we have here is actually an
ambience, which is some people call it dark light effect.
It's more or less that you don't see where the light come from,
you only see the effect connected to.
People sometimes talk about luxury experience.
Yeah, more smoother experience. Yeah, this feels like I'm going
to dwell. I'm going to discover more.
I'm going to hang around more. Exactly.
It will hang around more. Wow, the first layer that we
have before lighting you rake. You hang around.
More yeah, the lighting can make you hang around more but but but
it also set the whole mode, so I will say that this first layer
is more or less the most important one.
Because it set the mood. So if you follow me here Alex, I
will show you a little different way of approaching the first
layer, the ambience. So Christian, we we were just
looking at sort of a dwell, a slow discovery type experience,
but you were telling me that you can also create a fast-paced
experience. Yeah, we set the hood depending
on on on on the, on the atmosphere and and.
And the type of shopping for here example we we have more or
less the same lux level, but we have a higher brightness
experience because we now showing the luminaire and we
creating a much more smoother ambient at still higher level.
So it's more about speed shopping, making decision fast,
creating the selections fast without having the motor set
that maybe stays make you stay a little bit longer in the store.
So that is what I want to show you here.
Completely different approach from the glare of lighting to
the hybrid situation we have here that makes you shop fast
and quickly. OK, Alex, now it's time to take
a look onto the power of accent lighting.
And we're talking about the layers that most of the readers
are fully aware about how much impact contrasts.
And atmosphere directional spotlights can create for the
environment. So what we do now is we we we
use accents but we have a little bit more cozy atmosphere.
We we rely on the the way that this atmosphere should have a
little bit more cozy feeling. We add in the 2700 Kelvin means
also that we don't can keep the warm in the luxury level, keep
the atmosphere really good and what we do now is that we.
The 2700 Kelvin appearance which you can see here which also
addressing a much more calmer, relaxing atmosphere.
If I want to go up in speed lot, meaning that it's creating much
more speed shopping, then I instead take down the 2700
Kelvin and instead using the more common temperature 3000
Kelvin, which is not a major different but it creates a
different for the whole space. So for example in the store you
can easily do so that you have one part which is warmer light
and one part which is cooler light.
And you can fairly see there is a trend now in retail space is
that if we're talking about 3000 Kelvin only as a color
temperature before now we much more defining where should we
have the warmth atmosphere, where should we have the speed
shopping atmosphere, where should we have the experienced
atmosphere etcetera, etcetera depending on the space and the
goods. So Stefan, tell me what what are
we looking at here? Welcome to our retail
experience. Centre where we.
Show different ways of of illuminating aisles in a do it
yourself store or a grocery store.
There are many ways to do that actually, and I will show you
the most common way first using a so-called trunking system.
This is general lighting, nothing else.
It's the light you need. It's a flat light over the whole
area. There is no special direction to
the light to the merchandise which is actually and you would
like to show. To the consumer, so we can help
our consumers a lot by directing the light to the merchandise so
you can see what you're supposed to buy and inform yourself.
I'm now switching to the more directed light and you can see
the difference because now we put all the focus on the
merchandise by using directed light.
And integrated light in the interior, Let's start with the
directed light. As you can see here now in the
back, all light is focused on the merchandise with the right
colour temperature in the colour rendering, so you can make an
informed choice before you buy. There's very little attract
attention to the floor because you can orientate yourself
anyway. So I'm now going also to add
integrated light into the interior.
To further enhance the consumer experience and the merchandise
and as you can see now all the focus is on the merchandise,
finding the right colour, making the right choice instead of
focusing too much in the floor and on the CD.
This is the preferred consumer experience to help made make
informed choices, Stefan. Earlier on, we discussed how
sustainability is top of mind for a lot of retailers and their
costs. How do they do more with less?
I'm just curious, can lighting be a part of that conversation?
For sure Alex, it can and and it can actually help that
conversation a lot. I mean lighting stands for 17 to
18% of the world's energy consumption and a quite a big
part of the OpEx operational cost in a store.
Is associated with energy consumption, energy cost for.
So by making sure that you use the latest technology and save
on energy when you make your lighting investment, you can
help that decision because you free up capital then you can
spend on loss prevention and the better enhanced consumer
experience. So in that sense lighting is is
the perfect investment. Both save cost and you can use
the money. For other very important
investments, Christian, earlier when we started our discussion
about lighting, you mentioned lighting is art and I can see
behind you lighting is art. Talk me through what what we're
seeing here. Actually, I mean light can also
be used as a communication tool in many circumstances.
In this case, we we have made a piece of art, to be honest, Like
it or not, it's a. It's a kind of a.
Things happen in the store, drag you into the store making light
as a communication. We talked about in the black box
you remember about perception value, about looking through
things and contrast etcetera. So this is just a simple way to
make attention or draw attention to a piece of place in the store
like here we are now. You can see from the entrance
all the way that something happened there.
So it's a kind of a communication.
It's like it's not to lit the store, but giving kind of an
emotion I would say. And just out of interest from a
design perspective, what's the design process that you go
through with customers? It depends a little bit on
sometimes hopefully we have to come with IDs.
I mean if you know the scope we know maybe also the the brand,
then we if the if the customer itself have their own ideas, we
of course build in our solution into the idea.
If the lack of ideas we oftenly come with rendering studies.
Or it could be. Mood boards or whatever, just to
make them aware about the all the possibilities they have to
make different kind of emotions. Yeah, Chris mentioned that you
offer us the design solution service.
Or something. That's right.
We have you at the support of our offer.
We, I would say in in the most of our cases we use in this
solution design process as you say the selection of choices of
our brand portfolio, but also how we combine that together to.
Make it easier for the retailer to operate in the store, make
the loss prevention but also the atmosphere for the for the
customer as well. So it's a kind of a workflow
workflow chart you can say, to take all parts of the design
process in consideration. That's brilliant.
Thank you. Thanks.
Thanks, Alex.