Lightrays - Sepember/October 2013

IN THIS ISSUE

2 Association News

4 Government Affairs

5 Technology/Energy Efficiency

6 Retail Management

7 2013 Annual Conference

11 Member News

14 Education/Training

The American Lighting Association
is a trade association representing
the lighting industry, serving
members and their customers, and
working to protect and advance
the industry while promoting the
sale and application of quality
lighting products.

September/October 2013 • Volume 43, No. 5 www.americanlightingassoc.com

Light Watch

Mark your calendars now for these upcoming lighting events.

September 12

Live Webinar: How to Select, Lay Out and Sell Recessed Lighting Including LED

September 22-24

ALA Annual Conference Lost Pines, Texas

October 17

Live Webinar: How to Read
Construction Drawings: Improving
Your Lighting Sales and Efficiency

November 14

Live Webinar: From Classicism to
Modernism: Applications of Decorative
Lighting Styles

December 12

Live Webinar: How to Lay Out a Lighting Plan for an Energy Efficient Home

Industry Leaders to Be Honored
at ALA Annual Conference

Five industry leaders will be honored during the closing banquet of the ALA Annual Conference Sept. 24 at the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort and Spa near Austin, Texas.

John McKiernan will be inducted into the Lighting Hall of Fame, while David S. Shiller, David A. Gatto, David R. Turner, and Wendy A. Lofing-Rossotti will be honored with the 2013 Pillar of the Industry awards.

The Lighting Hall of Fame was established in

2000 and is presented to individuals who have provided a lifetime of exceptional devotion to the industry, as well as to the ALA. The selection criteria is based on their magnitude of success in the lighting industry, the number of years of service, their impact of their contributions to the industry and to the association, and the level of peer respect.

The Pillar of the Industry awards recognize ALA members (manufacturers’ representative, showroom and/or manufacturer) for their unique and meaningful service to advance the lighting industry and the ALA’s programs and mission during the previous 18 months. Award recipients, nominated by ALA members and staff, are selected by the ALA Awards Committee.

John McKiernan

Hall of Fame inductee McKiernan joined Lutron in 1973 as assistant to the president. He was promoted to vice president in 1974 and to his current position in 1990. He also serves as a director of Lutron’s overseas companies.

Before joining Lutron,
McKiernan was vice president of mar-
keting for Triangle Industries.

Three Actions Members can Take to
Move Internet Sales Tax Bill

Because of a decades-old loophole that pre-dates the Internet, online-only companies can achieve as much as a 10-percent price advantage over brick-and-mortar retailers by not collecting state sales tax. This special treatment has the effect of the government picking winners and losers in the marketplace, and local businesses simply cannot compete over the long term with online giants that have a competitive advantage based on government policy.

Unless the system is corrected, local retailers – big and small – will increasingly be forced to close their doors, taking with them the millions of retail jobs they provide, as these businesses are punished by the government for following the law, while their online competitors are exempt. This loophole is costing jobs on Main Street while shortchanging state budgets by an estimated $23 billion in uncollected sales

Showrooms
use BiNational
Program’s Free PR
Stories to Boost
Google Rankings

Have you ever “Googled” or looked up lighting phrases on a search engine only to be disappointed that your showroom is so far down the list? Maybe your website is lacking pertinent content that will set your store apart from the others. But getting content can be expensive to develop, running as high as $1,500 a story.

Not anymore.

The ALA BiNational Advertising and PR Program can resolve that issue quite easily. The program has an inventory of feature stories on lighting, ceiling fans and dimming controls for showrooms to place on their websites, which, in turn, will boost a showroom’s search engine ranking. Called SEO or search engine optimization, this is the game that every company plays by doing the multitude of things that will move them towards the top of the Google food chain.

“Showrooms that take our material and drop it on their websites see a large improvement in their search rankings.

And we do the hard part for them.,” says Larry Lauck, vice president, com-munucations for ALA.

The next step is simply for the showroom’s webmaster to add them to the website.

Jason Petersen, President/CEO of
Hansen Lighting in Provo, Utah has
seen it firsthand. “Tapping into the
content provided by the ALA is one of
the smartest things that members can
do, says Petersen. “ We’ve used some of
that content on our site as a part of our
web optimization strategy, and now we
rank number one for a lot of different
products and product types in most of
the major search engines. The value is
tremendous!”
Petersen, who also is chair of
the ALA Electronic Technology