Ghirardelli Chocolate Storefront and Displays
Trinity Engineering
“Trinity is capable of engineering and building anything that our clients can imagine. This makes our partnership with Elemental LED incredibly valuable. The services and custom solutions we have received from them have solved lighting challenges and allowed us to deliver unique, high impact and energy efficient installations.”
Rick Millard, President
Trinity Engineering, Rohnert Park, CA
Summary
Goal: Create stunning store fixtures and custom architectural millwork for large retail chain proprietary shops that are evenly lit and enhance the appearance of retail environments and products on display.
Challenge: Clients need a lightweight, durable lighting solution that is easy to install and maintain, and is easy to replicate across hundreds of locations nationwide. Additionally, they want to reduce energy related costs, and need their installation to be LEED certified.
Result: Elemental LED lighting offers limitless customization options to meet the exact specifications of the client. The collaboration created a high impact LED lighting solution that offered significant energy savings and made LEED certification possible.
Elemental LED Value: LED lighting is a rapidly changing technology and Elemental LED offers new solutions every day. Personalized account management and expert technical support from Elemental LED allowed Trinity Engineering to evaluate the latest LED innovations to solve their customers’ unique lighting challenges. Elemental LED provided customized, high output LED products with preassembled parts for Trinity Engineering’s design that met its customers’ exact specifications. These customized configurations cut manufacturing and installation time, thus allowing Trinity to save the related expenses.
Challenge
The retail and display fabricator’s role is to enhance the display and presentation of their client’s products. Trinity Engineering accomplishes this through customized design and production of fixtures and millwork made out of combinations of wood, metal and plastic. Since lighting plays such an important role in the finished retail environments that Trinity creates, the display design and lighting work together to evenly highlight product without shadows and with the optimal light color to enhance the specific merchandise on display.
Compared to traditional lighting like fluorescent, the unique capabilities and flexibility of LED lighting has opened up opportunities previously unachievable in lighting customization and quality of light. Clients also want the energy-saving benefits of LED lighting in their proprietary shops. Keeping abreast of the new, rapidly changing world of LED lighting options poses new challenges for the retail fabricator.
Rick Millard of Trinity Engineering needed to find an LED company he could partner with to provide the expertise and experience to help him navigate through this new low-voltage lighting technology. He needed to find a vendor that would remove the guesswork in terms of light output, color-temperature, assembly and installation so that his clients, large retail chain end users, would receive consistent, durable, and easy to assemble products at their outlets nationwide. “We always want to give the customer what they ask for,” said Millard, “Their happiness is the bottom line.”
Solution
Trinity Engineering began working on its first project with Elemental LED on lighting the storefront, shelving and displays of several proprietary shops for a gourmet chocolatier in San Francisco. They chose to work with Elemental LED based on the company’s comprehensive product portfolio, supporting components, easy to use connectors, extensive 5-year product warranty and the brightness and quality of its LED strip lights. However, it was the customization and on-site support that really made the relationship valuable.
During the initial installation of the LED strip lighting, they realized they needed additional support to tackle the new layouts and connections required for their LED lighting solution. They worked with their Elemental LED account team, which included account management, technical support and engineering, to make sure all connections and wiring were properly secure and that the installation would pass code inspection. In addition to trouble-shooting on the phone, Elemental sent a field engineer to the site of the installation to perform an inspection. A full report was generated that included what was needed to bring the installation up to code and deliver optimal performance.
“Elemental has been greatly responsible in steering us towards how to properly use LED lights. This has helped us tremendously moving forward with further projects,” said Millard.
During one of their following projects, Elemental LED introduced Trinity Engineering to several customization options that would improve the final outcome of their products. Their Account Manager worked directly with one of Trinity’s clients to develop an LED strip light with a custom color temperature (kelvin rating) that would go into shops all over the US.
In addition, Elemental LED helped Trinity provide their clients with a faster installation process. On a recent project, Millard provided his Account Manager with a list of all the supportive parts they needed. Elemental LED pre-assembled multiple components and provided Trinity with one finished part to install. “This was a huge time and money saver for us as this project involved over 300 stores nationwide,” said Millard.
Millard reflected on how Elemental LED has helped the team at Trinity Engineering build on their client relationships: “Our partnership with Elemental LED is incredibly valuable. The services we receive from them allow us to continually solve problems for our clients and create happy long term customer relationships.”
