5 Things to Know: August 29

This week's courtroom coverage of Mlazgar v. Hubbell Lighting appealed to only a certain sector of our readership, but the audience it reached went deep. One question, a minor point relative to the larger case, came up multiple times: was Cooper Lighting Solutions being heavy-handed by contractually barring representation of 28 competing lines?

A closer look at the list suggests less an act of manufacturer overreach than a snapshot of where Cooper's actual competitive concerns sat in the summer of 2020, when the Cooper-Mlazgar contract was being negotiated. At the time, Cooper was only months into Signify ownership, and GE Current and Hubbell Lighting were still separate companies. A meaningful share of the names on the list cluster in sports lighting and controls, alongside the bigger, more expected commercial lighting rivals of that era.

The list below comes from Inside Lighting's own courtroom notes. More than 150 filings in the case were sealed, so this reflects what our correspondents were able to transcribe from courtroom monitors in real time, including a couple apparent duplicates and one name that proved illegible.

Architectural Digest named 11 lighting design firms to its "AD-Approved" roster this week, in an article titled "11 AD-Approved Architectural Lighting Designers to Make Your Next Project Glow," published in AD PRO on August 25. The designation isn't an industry certification. Firms apply to join AD's Directory with a portfolio and business description, and AD's editors curate the final list.

Still, the placement signals how lighting design is being marketed to a high-end consumer and architecture audience well outside the trade press. For lighting people, the list is less a credential than a snapshot of which firms have positioned themselves for that crossover visibility.

The 11 firms named:

• Fisher Marantz Stone — New York, Austin, Seattle
• Focus Lighting — Brooklyn, NY
• HLB Lighting Design — 10 offices worldwide, including New York
• John Cullen Lighting — London, Paris, Dubai, Mumbai, Dallas
• Lighting Workshop — Brooklyn, Southampton
• Linnaea Tillett Lighting Design Associates — New York
• L'Observatoire International — New York
• Orsman Design — New York, Miami
• RegensDesign — Los Angeles
• Speirs Major Light Architecture — London, Tokyo
• Tirschwell Lighting Design — New York, Los Angeles

New filings show how much of Signify India's reported growth came from restructuring, not demand.

UnlistedZone, an India financial markets research firm, published a deep dive this week on the Dixon Technologies joint venture Inside Lighting reported on when the deal closed. Signify sold its Vadodara LED factory to Lightanium, the 50:50 JV, then became its customer, buying back ₹302.1 crore ($36.3 million) of the same products it used to manufacture.

UnlistedZone explained that cash flows nearly offset: ₹150 crore ($18 million) received against ₹145.6 crore ($17.5 million) reinvested for the stake. But the sale generated a ₹90.9 crore ($10.9 million) one-time gain baked into reported profit. Strip that out, along with severance and labor-code charges, and profit-before-tax growth falls from 32.2% to 22.5%, closer to the company's 5.6% revenue growth.

Because Signify holds exactly 50% of Lightanium, the JV's ₹558.2 crore ($67 million) in liabilities stay off Signify's balance sheet, even as the company's entire product supply now runs through a venture with a 1.3% margin against Signify's own 11.3%. Add an unresolved transfer-pricing dispute with the Dutch parent and receivables growing four times faster than sales, and the balance sheet's zero-debt shine looks less simple underneath.

Australia's ABC News reported this week on a Lighting Council of Australia study that found 73 percent of 131 lighting products bought through online marketplaces failed Australian safety standards.

Three downlights sent for independent lab testing all failed a required safety check and caught fire under heat and flame exposure; two were destroyed in high-voltage strength testing. Temu and AliExpress scored worst, with none of their sampled products passing compliance, while only 8 percent of Amazon products and 12 percent of eBay products passed.

Two of the failed products carried no model number, making recall or seller identification effectively impossible. Temu pulled all its 240-volt lighting listings within a week of being notified; Amazon, AliExpress, and Kogan had not responded as of ABC's publication. The council is pushing for mandatory removal of non-compliant listings and stronger regulatory authority over online marketplaces.

IES has opened 14 standards documents for ANSI public review, running August 28 through October 12. The list spans revisions to recommended practices for sports and hospitality lighting, new documents covering jail lighting and LED photometric testing, and a decade's worth of re-affirmations for lamp and luminaire test methods. Comments go through Pat McGillicuddy or Dan Ozminkowski at IES.

Learn more: Illuminating Engineering Society  »

New

• BSR/IES RP-49-2x Recommended Practice: Lighting Jails and Lockups
• BSR/IES TM-44-2x Parametric Variations in LED Packages, Arrays and Modules Affecting Luminous Flux and Color Maintenance
• BSR/IES LM-101-2x Approved Method: Photometric Testing for Roadway Luminaires-LEDs

Revisions

• BSR/IES RP-6-2x Recommended Practice: Lighting Sports and Recreational Areas
• BSR/IES RP-9-2x Recommended Practice: Lighting Hospitality Spaces
• BSR-IES LM-91-2x Approved Method: Application Distance Radiometry
• BSR/IES LM-80-2x Approved Method: Measuring Maintenance of Light Output Characteristics of Solid-State Light Sources

Re-affirmations

• BSR/IES LM-88-18(R27) Approved Method: Optical and Electrical Measurements of AC-LED Packages and Arrays or Modules
• BSR/IES LM-35-20(R27) Approved Method: Photometric Testing of Floodlighting for HID or Incandescent Lamps
• BSR/IES LM-46-20(R27) Approved Method: Photometric Testing of Indoor Luminaires Using HID or Incandescent Filament Lamps
• BSR/IES LM-73-04(R27) Approved Method: Photometric Testing of Entertainment Luminaires Using Incandescent Filament Lamps or High Intensity Discharge Lamps
• BSR/IES LM-61-20(R27) Approved Method: Identifying Operating Factors for Installed High Intensity Discharge Luminaires
• BSR/IES LM-62-20(R27) Approved Method: Laboratory or Field Thermal Measurements of Fluorescent Lamps and Ballasts in Luminaires
• BSR/IES LM-40-20(R27) Approved Method: Life Testing of Fluorescent Lamps
• BSR/IES LM-47-20(R27) Approved Method: Life Testing of High Intensity Discharge (HID) Lamps
• BSR/IES LM-65-20(R27) Approved Method: Life Testing of Single-Based Fluorescent Lamps
• BSR/IES TM-26-20(R27) Technical Memorandum: Projecting Catastrophic Failure Rate of LED Packages