July 23, 2025
Color Kinetics Auction: Anonymous Buyer Revealed
Buyer of New York State’s $37 million lighting surplus is a name the industry knows well
The lights are going home.
In a plot twist befitting a saga already full of expensive miscalculations and bureaucratic drift, Signify — the global lighting company that originally sold $37 million worth of Color Kinetics fixtures to the State of New York — has bought them back. Not for millions. Not even for one. The final price: $383,100. That’s less than what New York was paying in warehouse rent every other month to store them.
Call it sustainability. Call it brand management. Call it damage control.
But what it really might be, is a corporate clean-up of one of the lighting industry’s most high-profile political flameouts.
From Ambition to Auction
The “Harbor of Lights” project, once pitched as a nightly symphony of color over New York City’s bridges and tunnels, has been a slow-motion collapse since the day it was announced in 2017. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s vision — nine major New York City bridges and tunnels illuminated in RGBW — collapsed under the weight of shifting priorities, pandemic disruption, and Cuomo’s own fall from grace.
The Color Kinetics gear, represented locally by Electric Lighting Agencies (now ELA + Synergy), never made it to the bridges. Instead, it was shrink-wrapped and palletized in a New York warehouse. Storage costs were accumulating in the millions, and by June of this year, the New York Power Authority (NYPA) decided to cut its losses.
In an online auction that wrapped on June 23, an anonymous bidder under the handle Chicago_WR swept in with a winning offer of just $383,100.
Speculation surged. Was this an entrepreneurial lighting rep with Color Kinetics lineage? (Camera cuts to Ted Pearlman of ELA + Synergy.) Was it a city or state planning a more frugal RGBW makeover? A clever operator poised to flip millions in gear to secondary markets?
Turns out, it was none of those.
Because the buyer was Signify — the very company that manufactured the products in the first place.
What Signify Says, And Doesn’t Say
In a statement to Inside Lighting, Signify confirmed the buyback:
“Signify North America Corporation purchased the Color Kinetics architectural lighting that the New York Power Authority put up for auction last month. As the original manufacturer of the Color Kinetics lights, we will evaluate the quality of the products, which are not under warranty, and properly recycle or repurpose the components. This is in line with our commitments to delivering the highest quality lighting products to the market, and to advancing sustainability.”
The phrase “recycle or repurpose” is doing a lot of work here.
The spokesperson confirmed that none of the products — no fixtures, no controls, no cables — are expected be resold in their finished goods form. All are out of warranty. Some are discontinued. Others have simply aged beyond their prime, after sitting untouched for several years in conditions unknown.
Above: List of materials up for auction in June. Image credit: Auctions International
It’s a sustainability move, yes — but also something more. Signify now controls where the gear goes, how it’s handled, and what story gets told. Not just about recycling. About reputation. About keeping the brand — and the market — intact.
Penny on the Dollar, Pound of Prevention
What does it mean for a global lighting brand to buy back $37 million in gear for $383K? On the surface, it looks like a remarkable deal — a warehouse worth of commercial-grade fixtures for a fraction of their original price. But viewed from Signify’s perspective, it’s more like paying a miniscule restocking fee to protect the Color Kinetics name from going sideways.
Imagine thousands of RGBW units, never installed, dumped into a gray market, sold through unfamiliar channels, installed in questionable conditions. Out of warranty, out of context, and out of control.
That’s a headache scenario for any architectural brand. And for a company that positions itself as a global leader in professional-grade, dynamic, spec-driven RGBW lighting? It’s an existential threat.
By stepping in as the anonymous buyer, Signify didn’t just rescue its own gear. It possibly avoided significant damage to the Color Kinetics reputation.
And it did so at a price that barely registers — just 1% of the original transaction, $383,100. A rounding error for a company of Signify’s size. A fraction of what it might cost to handle the PR and channel fallout of seeing discontinued products flood the aftermarket.
The company essentially paid a 1% restocking fee for several years of New York’s bureaucratic regret.
The Quiet Logic Behind a Corporate Cleanup
So, what does Signify gain from this move?
- Sustainability credibility: Recycling instead of landfilling supports ESG narratives — and that plays especially well in its European homeland, on earnings calls, and with institutional investors.
- Channel protection: Keeping massive amounts of discounted gear off the secondary market helps maintain pricing discipline and protects current product lines.
- Brand integrity: Color Kinetics is a premium name. Letting old, unsupported gear hit the streets could undermine years of marketing and specifier trust.
- Damage containment: This entire saga began as a high-profile Cuomo initiative. Whatever remained of that association, Signify just bought it — and buried it.
What's Next?
As of this writing, the New York Power Authority has not yet fulfilled Inside Lighting’s formal Freedom of Information request to release documents relating to the auction and the buyer. A NYPA attorney has promised a response by July 31.
Whether that response adds further nuance or simply confirms what we now know remains to be seen. Either way, the Inside Lighting I-Team will continue to monitor.
For now, the lights are gone. The warehouse, presumably, will be emptied. And New York taxpayers are left with a cautionary tale: a $37 million plan to illuminate the skyline, extinguished by politics — and quietly boxed up by the company that sold it all in the first place.
