LED Lighting for Big Box Superstores

The term industrial space is one we often reserve for places inaccessible to the public. They are places you need special training, guidelines and clearance to even enter. Places such as steel mills, food processing plants or military aircraft hangars. One of the few exceptions to this are big box superstores, but what an exception it is. In 2016, the last recorded ranking, Walmart was the world's largest company in terms of dollars earned. It also has one of the highest numbers of employees in the world at 2.3 million, which is the same number of employees as the People's Liberation Army of China.

 

With such a huge scale, we are going to need huge improvements in terms of lighting.

 

What are Big Box Stores?

 

Big box stores are so called due to the size of product located within them. They are still a store. Customers come in, browse for what they want and then pay at the cash register. However, the product is sold at an industrial scale and these customers may be private citizens or large companies in their own right.

 

What Lighting Needs do Big Box Stores Have?

 

In industrial warehouses, storage is the name of the game. Pack as much as you can in before it gets shipped out or create a space to house very specific items. With big box superstores (such as Walmart, Sears or Lowe's), there are different considerations to make.

 

A balance needs to be struck in terms of fitting as much product in as possible, but also making it convenient and safe for the customer to navigate. In these big-box megastores, the ceilings are incredibly high. This means the lighting needs to be able to cover the entire area. More importantly it needs to fill in the spaces between the shelves. Workers may have special safety equipment to navigate certain industrial spaces, but you can't ask the same of a civilian customer.

 

Not only this, but they have the lighting needs of most stores, just on a larger scale. All exits need to be clearly visible, the layout of the store needs to be plain and the payment area needs to be well lit.

 



 

How Can LED Lighting Improve Revenue?

 

High bay LED lighting will solve your problems in terms of lighting needs. It will fill the horizontal space as well as the vertical thanks to angled lenses. They will also save you money. By being up to 70% more efficient in comparison to metal halide and compact florescent bulbs, LED lighting will work for your space as well as your bank.

 

They last longer and do not depreciate in luminosity as much as florescent or halogen bulbs. Not only this, but installation costs don't need to be through the (very high) roof. Retrofitting and plug and play replacement bulbs can make the job a cinch.

 

How Can LED Lighting Improve Safety?

 

Safety is incredibly important when it comes to workers. There is no doubt they need every safety enforcement available to them. However, with civilian customers, there is the added element of the unknown. You are never sure who is going to come through your door.

 

With the high quality lighting and sustained brightness of LEDs, customers will not be able to use the excuse that they couldn't see where they were going. Not only this, but there is a virtually zero percent chance of LED lighting exploding (especially with proper installation) or flickering, something which cannot also be said for florescent bulbs or metal halides. LED might boost your revenue in terms of savings, but it also may help it by evading litigation.