Page 96 - Lighting Magazine June 2018

“Augmented reality is coming soon, although there is not enough lighting content available yet.” — Steven Schranz, Lightology
Retail Strategy
“Augmented reality is coming soon, although there is not enough lighting content available yet,” Schranz remarks. “It’s still a very expensive imple- mentation, and most of our customers haven’t had exposure to it yet. However, in the near future, I believe it will become a critical tool for any sales department. Even though we might not be ready to invest or put much time into its integration right now, we’re still keeping our eyes open at what’s ahead.”
with a middle market boutique rm doing mergers and acquisitions. A er more than one decade of working with entrepreneurs as clients, he caught the “entrepreneur bug” and began searching for the potential opportunities.
“At around the same time, I learned that a close colleague of mine at the investment bank, Chris Menasco, was also looking to strike out on his own, so we agreed to team up and started looking at ac- quisition opportunities together,” Johnson recalls. “Fortunately, I was introduced to the owner and founder of Shades of Light and we ultimately struck a deal to buy the company [in 2011].”
Shades of Light opened its doors as a traditional brick and mortar in 1986 and launched its website in 2002. While there are fairly obvious di erences between the two, there is one common thread: “You can build a fabulous showroom lled with great product, but if you put it out in the middle of nowhere with no tra c, you still won’t generate sales,” Johnson remarks, adding, “The same can be said of websites. You can invest a small fortune in building out an ecommerce website, but if you don’t have any tra c, you won’t generate any sales.”
Managing this level of broad presence and ensur- ing that all segments are operating seamlessly isn’t easy. “It’s all about integration and reporting,” John- son says. “To keep all of our sales areas well-aligned, we make sure that new products, pricing and cost updates, promotions, etc. are synced across all channels. We also have internal reporting de- signed to keep the showrooms abreast of any new products.”
When it comes to web presence and search engine positioning, Shades of Light outsources its pay-per-click and SEO marketing to an agency. Me- nasco and Shades of Light’s internal IT department work closely with that agency to stay on top of the technical aspects that can make or break SEO.
Interestingly, Johnson said that the company’s sales can be a ributed to essentially the same mix of customers across all three of their sales chan- nels – showroom, catalog, and website – and that their sales are within approximately the same price points.
“Our primary customers are female shoppers making purchases for their home – or in many cases a second home – as well as interior design- ers and buyers for hospitality groups like hotels, retail chains, restaurants, and bars,” Johnson com- ments. “We spend a lot of resources on customer
94 enLIGHTenment Magazine | June 2018
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Bryan Johnson of Shades of Light began his career in a much di erent se ing than lighting, but that ex- perience has been extremely bene cial. As CEO, he is involved in many aspects of the organization, most heavily in the oversight of merchandising functions such as catalog production, hospitality sales, and the buying and purchasing departments. At Shades of Light, the buying department man- ages item selections, product development, and categories, while purchasing focuses on in-house inventory.
Johnson got his start as an investment banker