Application: Commercial   Location: Wilsons Leather Outlet, Albertville, Minn. Product: METALARC® POWERBALL® Ceramic Lamps and M250/MULTI-PS-KIT Ballasts SYLVANIA Commercial Engineer: Katrina Tadic

Side-By-Side Comparison at Wilsons Leather Outlet demonstrates SYLVANIA POWERBALL® Ceramic Lamp Color Benefits
 
The Situation
 
Wilsons Leather Outlet has been using standard 250-watt metal halide lamps with a protective shroud around a quartz arc-tube throughout most of their stores.  Maintenance is currently handled by spot re-lamping.  In many cases, the management observed that the light levels of the store were low and the lamp color from fixture to fixture was inconsistent or dull.  They were interested in products that had higher CRI, better lumen maintenance and minimal color shift.  Katrina Tadic, commercial engineer for OSRAM SYLVANIA, suggested installing METALARC® CERAMIC 250-watt lamps, which combine pulse start technology with SYLVANIA’s POWERBALL ceramic arc-tube technology as well as the protective shroud around the arc-tube.  Wilsons Leather Outlet management was unsure if this was the solution and would need to justify the retrofit costs.
 
The Solution
  
OSRAM SYLVANIA’s objective was to demonstrate that the METALARC POWERBALL CERAMIC 250-watt lamps with the pulse start technology would improve the color consistency from lamp-to-lamp and improve the merchandise appearance in the stores.  By installing this lamp type, color rendering properties would increase from 65 to 94 CRI, the highest CRI available for metal halide lamps.  The lamp color shift over life would be greatly reduced from up to 400 degrees shift in color temperature to less than +/- 200 degrees.  Maintained lumens would also be improved by six percent and lamp life increased by 50 percent.   The best way to show these advantages was to install a test.

SYLVANIA LIGHTING SERVICES installed a side-by-side comparison of the quartz arc-tube product versus the ceramic arc-tube product at the Wilsons Leather Outlet store in Albertville, Minn.  The light fixtures on the right half of the store from front to back were re-lamped with MP250BU-ONLY lamps (quartz arc-tube lamps).    The light fixtures on the left half of the store were retrofitted with M250/MULTI-PS-KIT ballasts and METALARC POWERBALL CERAMIC MCP250PS/BU-ONLY lamps (ceramic arc-tube lamps).

The METALARC POWERBALL CERAMIC lamps provided the best .  There were noticeable differences between the reds and blues on sale signs on one side of the store compared to the other. The brand representatives commented that the sale sign colors were brighter and more vivid due to the METALARC CERAMIC lamps.  The store manager felt that in the long run he could save money maintaining this system due to the longer lamp life and have better quality to showcase the true colors of the merchandise.

“The half of the store lit with the METALARC CERAMIC lamps looks brighter, and the colors of the merchandise and graphics are sharper,” said Amy Walztoni, visual manager for Wilsons Leather Stores. “Even the various colors and textures of the leather are more distinguishable for our brand representatives and customers.”