Minebea SALIOT LED lighting illuminates showroom floor for Thai Porsche dealer

Background
AAS Auto Service is a company under CTI Group. CTI is a well known logistic company and a trusted partner of Minebea for over 30 years. Premier Lighting Solutions (PLS) was founded on October 2015 as part of the CTI companies, and sells and represents Minebea’s LED products in Asia. PLS approached AAS Auto Service about using their high-end Porsche Centre dealership located in Pattanakarn, Bangkok, Thailand, as a testing ground for the Smart Adjustable Light for the Internet of Things (SALIOT), a smart LED lighting system. AAS agreed, and Porsche was informed about this process. They have very strict guidelines on the type of lights and color of lights that are allowed to be used in their dealerships.

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Challenges
Automobile dealerships face the challenge of being too static. Dealership showrooms often have high ceiling to create an appearance of space and achieve an elegant display of car choices for the consumer. Lighting and illumination have already been set according to corporate identity guidelines and showroom floor plans. Faced with these factors, most showrooms choose not to move the cars on display too often to avoid more work. Most dealerships will replace the display car with another in the same size at the same spot. However, in order to entice shoppers, display cars should be able to rotate occasionally to call attention. This rotation process involves adjusting the pre-set lights, which usually takes time, requires manpower, and results in high cost.
At AAS Auto Service, the only authorized Porsche dealership in Thailand, this process was hindering the frequency of display rotation, while creating inefficiencies and cost. This problem needed a solution that would address their 25-foot ceilings, the need for a dynamic showroom and practical cost effective results that could be implemented immediately.

Market Climate
The lighting market in Thailand is currently a roughly $880 million (USD) industry, and is growing rapidly, achieving 30 percent year-over-year growth, with LEDs alone comprising 12.3 percent of this market.

PLS expects to gain a three to four percent share of this market over the next few years, and to expand into AEC countries. PLS, as a Thai company, benefits from Thailand’s membership in AEC, ASEAN Economics Community, with the purpose of accelerating economic growth in the region. The ASEAN countries are experiencing a period of explosive infrastructure growth with businesses building new and retrofitting old buildings for optimal performance. LEDs are an efficient replacement and long-lasting solution to many lighting challenges.

Not only does Japan-based Minebea have a legacy of expertise in LED backlight, but it also is currently the leading producer of component parts and has created a line of high-end, highly sophisticated lighting systems, including SALIOT. This partnership enables PLS to provide products from a trusted name – one that has long ties and working relationships with many governments in the region.

Results
After a demonstration of how the SALIOT light would work in a showroom environment, and a change in body color to match Porsche’s corporate identity guidelines, Porsche Regional gave PLS the go-ahead to install the lights in its Thailand location.

SALIOT lights allow the lighting design team to change the position, beam angle, color, warmth and brightness of the light, all from a smartphone. This saves the team the time, energy, cost and liability of hiring someone to climb a 25-foot ladder every time the lighting needs to be changed in the showroom. The SALIOT lighting system also enables the dealership to instantly change the lights’ color, allowing designers to use light to highlight the vehicles’ richly colored exteriors. As a result, the dealership can maintain as dynamic a floor as they want by simply changing the lighting at the push of a button.

After this success, PLS opened a new showroom in Thailand to showcase the SALIOT lights in different applications, and offers bi-monthly events planned to display the work of local artists, using SALIOT lighting to strategically highlight the works. The showroom will position SALIOT as a high-end, niche product aiming to create a unique customer experience through smart lighting.

In the coming months, PLS will be installing SALIOT systems in two different Harley Davidson showrooms in Thailand. PLS will continue to work with Minebea to become the primary distributor of SALIOT throughout Southeast Asia.