Articles
Lisa Nardone of Rosie NYC:
I’ve been doing high-end lighting from Italy through Rosie NYC for seven years. Meredith has been doing Chandi, which is also very high-end, even longer in California. We’ve known... read more
Nordic LAttitudes, a new exhibition at California’s Santa Monica Public Library, celebrates the unique values of Scandinavian design. Here, installation curator and designer Haekwan Park discusses the importance of... read more
Gable
Ellany Gable: I took my first clay class as an elective during college. I loved throwing clay so much, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. I let 20 years go by to raise my family and got back into it... read more
McKenna: My first job before I graduated from college (Industrial Design, University of Illinois, 1997) was for the German lighting designer Ingo Maurer. I studied abroad in England for a year and was casting about for an... read more
Urso: I got the initial idea for combining resin and fabric in college at
Carnegie Mellon, where I majored in product design. I was taking
a foundry class in the art department, casting aluminum and bronze. I used fabric... read more
If you want to know what the future of the lighting industry looks like, check out the industry’s new networking group for young executives. Named the Initiative for the Future, the group already boasts some 60-odd members—... read more
Henderson: I’m not classically trained as a designer by any means. My degree is actually in aerospace engineering. I worked for the Air Force, Boeing, Lithonia and Kalco before launching Varaluz a year and a half ago with my... read more
Earlier this year, Seattle Lighting became the first lighting showroom to be named Energy Star Lighting Partner of the Year. Seattle Lighting Chief Operating Officer Dave McKee (center) accepted the award from the... read more
Residential Lighting: How do we handle an irate shopper?
Dr. Rick Brinkman: The customer wants to feel cared about. A study was once done by the White House Dept. of Consumer Affairs on why businesses lose customers: One... read more
Residential Lighting: What’s the formula for success with events?
Melissa Haberstroh: Start with a small-scale event—a visit by an author, artist or designer. Let’s say you are fortunate enough to get Bob Mackie to introduce... read more
We asked three Lighting Showroom of the Year nominees for January’s 17th Annual ARTS Awards to tell us into which accessories categories they’ve expanded and how well they’ve managed to weave them into their existing product... read more
Residential Lighting: What makes for good visual merchandising?
Paul Thompson: A vision. An understanding of what you want to be. Are you all things to everybody, or do you carry only certain items? Do you have expertise in... read more
For four years, Annapolis Lighting Co. President Preston Clark and his wife, Carlotta, have been deliberating the knotty process of turning over their four-store lighting showroom business in Annapolis, MD, to their... read more
Residential Lighting: Why are loyalty programs important?
Malcolm Fowler: They allow lighting showrooms to gather data about their customers. In the enrollment phase, you collect demographic and preferential data. And in a... read more
Good retailing is about turning inventory quickly. But merchandising dollars often get tied up stocking slow products and funding customer returns. Never let a sleeping “dog” lie in this business. Speaker, author and home... read more
Residential Lighting: Why is public relations so important?Bill Stoller: One mystery about public relations is the difference between it and advertising. In advertising, you write the copy, select when and where it’s going... read more
The quickened pace of fashion trends and technological innovations demands the kind of commitment to continuing education that an industry outsider might more typically associate with the legal or medical professions. Not... read more
Residential Lighting: What is "cultural planning" all about?
Larry Samuel: Fortune 500 companies and their ad agencies typically do lots of quantitative and qualitative research, so I bring them a different... read more
Residential Lighting: Explain the new science regarding the human eye.
George C. Brainard: Light is the primary stimulus to the visual system. That’s been well-studied for hundreds of years. What’s new in the... read more
Residential Lighting: How important is proper illumination to an overall design?
Clodagh: We talk about the lighting as we go through a design; it’s not brought in afterwards. Lighting is the fire in feng shui. If... read more
