The intention to change the name of Philips Lighting to Signify was recently announced.
"We chose this name because we realised that lighting has become an intelligent language which connects and conveys meaning," says Raja Moudgil Signify's country manager for Southern Africa.
"We will continue to use the Philips brand in store under the existing licensing agreement with Royal Philips, but the name change signals a new approach to lighting in SA for our business."
Moudgil said that, while the rest of the world has made the move to new environmentally friendly and cost saving LED lighting, South Africans continue to use 20-year old technology.
Globally, especially in Europe, the US and Asia, more than 70% of the industry has moved towards LED lighting. In South Africa less than 30% of the lighting being used is LED with South Africans still mostly using compact fluorescent light (CFL) technology.
"While the rest of the world adopted LED two years ago we are still seeing Halogen lighting being sold here. In 2016 the European Union banned the sale of Halogen lights which are even more damaging to the environment than CFL lighting," said Moudgil.
"The more we educate retailers and consumers the faster the industry as a whole will catch up to global norms and standards."
Three-tier approach
Signify is taking a three-tier approach to transforming the industry.
It starts with convincing key stakeholders, including government and the other stakeholders such as architects and specifiers in construction and design.
The second tier is looking at the different mediums of distribution – the networks through which the goods reach the consumers. More than 70% of the lighting purchases made by South African consumers occur at the more than 3 000 retail stores in the country.
The final tier is selling directly to consumers, which will remain the most difficult.
Moudgil also believes that LED lighting is not just about the home or businesses.
"South Africa has close to one million street light points and they are all conventional. Many of our highways, however, remain unlit because of either a lack of infrastructure or a failure of the infrastructure which does exist," says Moudgil.
"Converting highway lighting to LED lighting will cut costs, increase safety on our highways as LED lights last longer and, if they form part of intelligent system which activates lighting with the use of motion sensors, could end up saving the government millions of rand in electricity costs."
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