MA Towns, Cities and State Facilities Get Free Lighting from Sylvania

Government and educational facilities represent significant lighting opportunities for distributors and lighting / lamp manufacturers. The challenge, frequently, is for these entities to obtain the budget that enables them to improve the quality of their lighting, reduce their electricity expenses and reduce maintenance expenses.

NorthEast Electrical, a Sonepar company, has teamed with Sylvania to enable government and educational facilities to get LED and T8 fluorescent lamps at NO CHARGE, albeit it is a short-term opportunity … orders must be placed between June 1 – July 31 and the material needs to be installed by August 29 (great for schools!)

This press release highlights the program.

And here you can view a copy of the program.

Now it’s doubtful that NEED is doing this 100% gratuitously.  Perhaps there are rebate monies involved from the utilities? Perhaps there is a unique SPA? Perhaps Sylvania, being a Massachusetts company, has some type of incentives? Who knows but a couple of thoughts:

• Congratulations to the two companies for combining to develop a unique program and capturing what could be a significant piece of business.
• Congratulations to NEED to be able to cover all of the locations and getting support from Sylvania.
• From a NEED viewpoint, this probably creates other opportunities within these customers to sell other products … now or later.
• What do other Sylvania distributors in Massachusetts think? Congratulations to Sylvania for teaming with a distributor on a large scale initiative and selecting a partner for a strategy versus trying to keep it quiet or splitting the opportunity.
• Wonder if Philips or GE had similar opportunities or if being a Massachusetts company really helped Sylvania?  If the state affiliation was important, could Philips do the same in New Jersey? GE Lighting or TCP replicate this in Ohio? Cree in North Carolina?

And if you’re a Sonepar company in another part of the country, presumably NorthEast can share key elements of the business model to see if it could be appropriate in your states.