Ripu Daman Sharma, a seasoned professional with a career spanning over a decade and the sales director at Lutron elaborates on key priorities for the company in 2023, environmental impact, and more importantly how Lutron is a mark above the rest in the lighting control industry.
How do you maintain your position as a top player? What makes you better than the rest?
We maintain our top position by continuous innovations and investment in R&D despite economic downturn to ensure Lutron to stay ahead of others in the lighting control industry. Besides, Lutron remains today the only company to design and manufacture systems of dimmers and automated window shades that control both electric light and daylight, plus the most comprehensive product range in the industry and our superior services including 8-year warranty and 24-7 customer hotline. Last but not least, our lighting control solutions are scalable with constant updates to make sure that they can meet the needs of consumers for today and future.
Heading into 2023, what are some of the key priorities for your business? What are the opportunities and challenges ahead?
One of our priorities in 2023 is to promote automated shades to various applications, including commercial, residential and public buildings. We always believe in order to achieve the best light environment, one must control both electric light and daylight in any given space. We will also continue to develop the hospitality market with customized solutions for hotel properties including publics areas and guestrooms.
We see increasing demand for wireless lighting controls and automated shades from both new and existing homes. The ongoing trends of smart home, app-based solutions and IoT can also generate a lot of opportunities for growing our business. However, we do face challenges like increasing material and transportation costs due to the adverse effect of COVID and supply chain shortage. We have tried our best to absorb most of the increased costs but are inevitably facing intense pressure.
For the lighting industry, what are the top 3 technologies that can’t be ignored?
The first important technology is tunable white LED lighting. The advancement of LED lighting technology and the proliferation of cost effective LEDs have brought the capability of tunable white lighting into the mainstream of lighting design. With tunable white projects, fixtures and lighting controls must be chosen at the same time to ensure compatibility and performance. The two must be able to work together to achieve a successful solution. Lutron tunable white control solutions ensure seamless compatibility and perfect adjustment of color temperature and intensity to provide the right lighting experience for every space.
Another technology is the universal phase control dimming which allows users to control all load types from one product with no minimum load requirement. Even a single pinhole downlight can be its own zone. Lutron has just launched the LED+ universal phase control dimmer for care-free application and design flexibility.
The third technology is app-based lighting software that puts real time programming and personalization in users’ hands. Lutron’s Athena dynamic lighting control system has a user-friendly App which enables lighting designers and facility managers to personalize scenes, adjust color temperature and create timeclock events to make the light just right. The App even comes with a dashboard to streamline building management at scale — and offers data visualization for space optimization, commercial energy savings, and more. Users can access it from anywhere to make global system changes, or to view reports.
Director Sales,
Lutron
In what ways can we reduce the environmental impact of our lighting choices?
Again the key is to select a good lighting control system which can offer total control of electric light and daylight. Dimming can save energy and extend lamp life, which in turn reduce landfill waste. People can also use occupancy sensors or daylight sensors to eliminate energy wastage in illuminating unoccupied spaces and excessive use of electric light when there is abundant incoming daylight. Finally we should make good use of automated shades to block direct sunlight to reduce heat gain and air-conditioning energy consumption.
