April 5, 2025
5 Things to Know: April 5
A price increase with a sense of urgency. Plus, a CEO invests personal funds to stabilize the publicly-traded company.
Here's a roundup of some of the week's happenings curated to help lighting people stay informed.
1. Acuity’s Price Hike Isn’t the Story, It’s the Two-Day Notice
Price increases in the lighting industry have become so frequent they aren’t worthy of headline news stories. Distributors are inundated with them — 120 active price increase letters are on the desk of one major distributor Acuity spoke with this week. Distributors are used to sudden pricing shifts for wire & cable when copper prices spike, so rapid adjustments aren't entirely foreign to them. But when Acuity, the largest lighting manufacturer in North America, announced another increase Thursday, it wasn’t the what that stood out. It was the when.
On Acuity’s Thursday morning earnings call, CEO Neil Ashe referenced a March 31 “low-mid single digit” price increase and confirmed another was on the way, triggered by newly announced global tariffs. Just hours later, by Thursday afternoon, the company issued a formal memo to customers stating that the new pricing would go into effect Monday, April 7. That gave buyers just one full business day, Friday, to place orders at current prices.
The memo didn’t disclose a specific percentage for the increase but did specify that it would apply to “a portion of our luminaires and electronics products.” It also noted that orders entered before April 7 but shipping after may also be reviewed for price adjustments.
Price hikes tied to tariffs aren’t unusual in this climate. What is unusual is the timeline. During less volatile times, lighting manufacturer price increase bulletins often come with three to six weeks of lead time for contractors and distributors to react and plan. Even by Acuity’s agile standards, this two-business-day runway is an anomaly. It’s not a knock on Acuity — they’re responding quickly to policy shifts. But in an industry where process predictability matters, the speed of this move stood out.
2 . Signify Revs Up F1 Marketing
Signify is revving up its Formula One auto racing marketing strategy with a new co-branded high-performance desk lamp designed in partnership with the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team. Priced around $315, the lamp combines tunable white lighting, anti-glare micro prisms, and motion-sensing smart features — blending technical precision with the aesthetics of elite motorsport. It will launch in China on Tmall (an Alibaba ecommerce site) in the coming weeks.
Signify’s broader marketing campaign features Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS CEO Toto Wolff in a rapid-fire Q&A about lighting, part of Signify’s ongoing attempt to connect high-performance lighting with high-performance culture. The company also hosted clients at the 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix, which drew 306,000 attendees, slightly down from last year.
This isn’t Signify’s first lap around the track. In the late 1990s, Cooper Lighting, now part of Signify, sponsored NASCAR driver Kenny Wallace’s Square D car, a reportedly expensive move that had mixed reviews from American lighting people. But today’s F1-focused strategy, while globally polished, may not land as cleanly with U.S. buyers who may perceive the sport as fringe. Formula One has gained some ground through Netflix’s Drive to Survive series, but for a company that earns one-third of its revenue in the U.S., the long-term return on racing partnership investments may have plenty of curves ahead.
3. CEO Puts His Own Cash into Energy Focus
In a move that blurs the line between confidence and desperation, Energy Focus CEO and CFO Jay Huang has injected $200,000 of his own money into the company via a private stock purchase. As detailed in a newly filed 8-K, Huang acquired 103,627 shares at $1.93 each — a price notably higher than the market rate on March 27, 2025, when the agreement was executed. The shares were sold directly to Huang under a Section 4(a)(2) exemption, meaning they were not registered with the SEC. This was an out-of-pocket, above-market investment by a top executive into a company teetering on the edge of a liquidity crisis.
This development comes just days after we reported on Energy Focus' mounting financial troubles. As Inside Lighting previously covered, the Ohio-based LED lighting company ended 2024 with just $0.6 million in cash, a steep drop from the $2 million it held the year prior. With revenues falling, particularly from its once-reliable military contracts, and a risky pivot into energy storage and AI-driven UPS systems underway, the company appears increasingly starved for capital. Huang’s $200K infusion may signal personal belief in the turnaround — but it also reads like a stopgap measure. For now, it’s a lifeline from within, in the absence of external investor appetite.
4. April Fools & Lighting
At Inside Lighting, we appreciate a good prank — especially in an industry that often takes itself a bit too seriously. This year, April Fools’ Day was relatively quiet on the lighting front, but one social media post stood out: a clever, high-production short video spoof from LEDVANCE highlighting the SYLVANIA Unlightbulb™. Creative, well-timed, and well-produced, it was everything an absurd April Fools' post should be.
This brought to mind an idea we had floated during a friendly collaboration several months before April 1, 2022. At the time, Edison Report publisher, Randy Reid, had asked Inside Lighting to help promote a National Lighting Bureau initiative. In return, he asked what he could do to support Inside Lighting. We suggested a coordinated April Fools’ prank: publishing the same fake story across both of our platforms to maximize believability and impact. Reid said he liked the idea, but the conversation never progressed further.
Then, on April 1, 2022, after 20+ years of steering clear of April Fools’ pranks — EdisonReport posted its first-ever attempt at one. No coordination. No heads-up. Just a solo fake story that, according to some lighting people, fell flat. The April Fools idea wasn’t offered freely — it was shared in response to Reid's direct question about how he could return a favor to Inside Lighting. But if you know Randy Reid’s record, you know this wasn’t a first. Reid has a long-standing reputation for taking others’ work and presenting it as his own.
So while April Fools' Day passed quietly for most this year, LEDVANCE showed that with some originality, creativity and effort, even a lighthearted, playful prank can brighten the industry in all the right ways.
5. No Wires, No Theft: L.A. Increases Bets on Solar Streetlights
Los Angeles is expanding its solar streetlight initiative with a new installation in Historic Filipinotown, part of a broader push to deter copper wire theft and restore lighting to underserved neighborhoods.
Announced this week by Mayor Karen Bass, the rollout builds on earlier deployments in Watts and the San Fernando Valley and aims to reduce outages caused by rampant cable theft. The new lights, supplied by Fonroche Lighting America, operate entirely off-grid—eliminating the need for copper wiring and enabling faster, tamper-resistant installation. “We are using new and innovative ways to improve city services for Angelenos,” said Mayor Bass, who visited city crews during the installation.
Unlike traditional grid-tied systems, these solar units don't require trenching or underground wiring, making them less vulnerable to theft and easier to maintain. Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, whose district includes Filipinotown, said the expansion is helping the city tackle its streetlight backlog while delivering “basic City services more efficiently.” As copper theft continues to plague urban infrastructure across the country, Los Angeles' solar strategy aims to make a practical workaround: cut the wires, cut the problem.
