Argo Lighting is one of the leading retail lighting manufacturers in India who brings two decades of experience in the industry.
While Argo is in the process of adding 70,000 sq ft to their already existing facility spanning across 70,000 sq ft, Euromag catches up with Yogesh Joshi, Managing Director, Argo Lighting on engineering innovations, challenges as well as the bright side of the retail lighting business.
Yogesh Joshi – Managing Director //© Argo Lighting
Mr. Joshi, what’s the percentage of square feet does lighting vendors cover in a retail store and has the space increased over last few years?
We have started our projects rolling out as a new brand from last 1 year, in the first year we were busy with the approvals from many corporate clients, now we are approved in almost every brand and already completed 130 projects in a first year with total area around 6.5 Lac square feet. Now we are expecting multifold increase in sales and our coverage.
In retail stores, lighting have the largest role to play when it comes to reducing opex, How is Argo maximizing that part.
When it comes to reducing the opex, 2 parts are very important. First – the power consumption of ighting fixture per sq. ft (watt per sq.) and secondly, how efficient is the system in terms of serving the purpose.First part is taken care by our team of pioneer engineers in lighting design and product design involving better optics and innovative lighting design, Argo lighting are having minimum power loss and service free within warranty terms. Hence, there is practically no need of lamp or driver or change during operations. The second part is thereby taken care of.
Also, we can provide a customized solution to reduce the capex as well.
©Argo Lighting
You have been really active on expanding your product portfolio lately. Please tell us the kind of design and value engineering you are putting in place at your facility.
We are designing some new concepts of products which can be blended with all the retail formats and space and the fixtures are mostly modular in terms of design.
Why export of retail lighting is is slow amongst Indian vendors? Are you taking any measure towards that?
Unfortunately, many lighting vendors in this country are still dependent on imported housings from other countries. All they have are the assembling factories. However, the fact is that we have very strong manufacturing, innovation and design skill sets that we are not putting into use. However, the good news is that the new age vendors are changing and they are amping up their innovation game pretty rapidly.
There is huge opportunity for Indian vendors who are innovative and backed with technologies to show their skill to the global market. We, at Argo, always target at producing products with high standards, keeping a close vigil to the global benchmark and retail lighting trends. Our innovations are further taken care of by our state-of-the-art all-integrated manufacturing facility and R&D Lab.
Stepping ahead now, we are also looking for the partners in global markets who can support us to spread our wings across world retail map.
Interview: EuroShop.mag
