Coming out of what many felt was one of the strongest LEDucation events to date, we’re sharing the results of our Q1 executive survey. Our poll was conducted from January 7 through March 31. Apologies for the delay but thank you again for contributing your perspective. First we’ll start with a look at the lighting and controls executives who participated.
Title Breakdown
• VP of Sales (all sales leadership variants) — 29.7%
• Executive Leadership (President / CEO / Managing Director) — 43.2%
• Vice President (non-sales) — 8.1%
• Principal — 5.4%
• Publisher — 5.4%
• Executive Consultant — 2.7%
Company Type
• Manufacturing — 78.4%
• Media — 5.4%
• Agency — 5.4%
• Distribution — 5.4%
• Lighting Design — 2.7%
• Service — 2.7%
Geography
• Northeast — 30.6%
• Southeast — 22.2%
• South Central — 19.4%
• Southwest — 11.1%
• Midwest — 8.3%
• Canada — 5.6%
• North Central — 2.8%
Confidence in Competitive Position (vs. 6 months ago)
• Somewhat more confident — 51.5%
• Significantly more confident — 39.4%
• About the same — 6.1%
• Somewhat less confident — 3.0%
• Significantly less confident — 0.0%
Takeaway: Confidence is decisively trending upward, with minimal negative sentiment.
Go-to-Market Pressure Points
• None—model working well — 29.4%
• Rep agency coverage and effectiveness — 26.5%
• Distributor relationships and expectations — 20.6%
• Specification/design engagement — 17.6%
• Direct sales vs. channel balance — 5.9%
Takeaway: While nearly a third report no pressure, the remaining responses suggest continued friction in channel execution—particularly around rep performance and distributor alignment.
Revenue Outlook for 2026 vs. 2025
• Modestly stronger — 45.6%
• Significantly stronger — 30.9%
• About the same — 17.6%
• Modestly weaker — 5.9%
• Significantly weaker — 0.0%
Takeaway: 76.5% skew positive (A + B), with no expectation of significant decline. The outlook is broadly optimistic, though more measured than aggressive.
“Wow” Products / Technologies (last 3–6 months)
A sampling of what stood out to your peers:
• Avi-On Controls (Hilton Sharkward reference)
• JDRF Electromag – “Autonomy Lighting System…a sensor who basically can program itself based on traffic patterns…”
• Bega “Connect”
• Cerno – “What Cerno has been doing is quite impressive.”
• Cleanlife – low voltage LED platform reducing energy, copper, and labor complexity
• Columbia Lighting MPS
• Current – “great fixture dissipating heat”
• Feit – adjustable color temperature via app control
• Fiori by Lib & Co. – “stunning…refined…high quality…biophilic appeal”
• Flos “Orizzontale” – sculptural linear system with strong materiality
• Xicato (XTS Pro) – AI-driven color recognition and enhancement
• Fluxwerx (Loop Suspended) – “HOT looking fixture…looks expensive”
• Linnore LED – lifetime economics and ease of install
• Lutron AWN sensors – strong integration, pricing, and availability
• Modular – aesthetic pendant/louvered design
• Tria – modular pole system integrating lighting, sensors, and more
• WAC – induction charging integrated under exhibit base
Closing Thoughts
Confidence is clearly up from one year ago and growth expectations seem solid. At the same time, execution continues to separate stronger performers from the others.
If there are questions you’d like us to include in our next survey, please let me know. As a thank you for participating, we are offering a 10% discount for any search initiated with Pompeo Group by May 15, 2026.*
Below you’ll find comments from a variety of executives on how they saw the 1st quarter.
• “I haven’t been terribly wowed by any products in the past 6 months. Controls advances continue to impress me but no particular ‘wow’ product. We’ve experienced some relatively good growth last year and it appears we will grow by the same order of magnitude this year.”
• “Part of our success is our competitors are worse than us [laughs]. We’re doing extremely well because they do not know how to manage their businesses, one of the biggest differences in comparing [us] to our competitors. We grew 20% last year [2025] and plan to grow this year. We don’t feel the market is doing that, but our customers have the confidence in us to grow our business.”
• “I don’t have a ‘wow’ product, nothing from a technology point of view—nothing that made me go ‘wow’. We do plan to grow. We do look more positive this year than going into last. We see that there are players in the market who struggle—customers of ours—but we also see customers who are growing and strong. What I can see is that flexibility is a key advantage in the market—being flexible in product availability, but also in product offering.”
• “One thing I’m curious about is all this consolidation of reps. I think SESCO just acquired two other reps in the southeast. It creates all sorts of misalignment with lines. I’m very curious. It’s turning up in the southeast and Southwest, with Bell & McCoy, too. Good for conglomerates, bad for anyone who is downstream and not at the top of the line card.”
• “Even at Light + Building I didn’t see anything that stood out—a lot of me-too stuff.”
• “I saw an LED tube that automatically identifies the pattern of traffic and programs itself as you go. So, if you’re coming from an airplane to your car and going into a parking garage and it will illuminate where it thinks you’re going to.”
• “Our challenge is it’s hard to get the reps’ attention.”
• “I can’t think of an individual product that ‘wow’-ed [me], but what I do see is the growth of the RGB fixtures in our space. We have our own line, but definitely the usage of RBG products in sports lighting. We’ve adopted the agent model but we’re considering the direct sale for this particular territory.”
• “Everything is more stable, some of these trade war talk has died down a bit—we know the score a little better. To be honest, I haven’t seen a lot of wow products in the last 3 . I think the distributor channel model is in a bit of flux right not. I think the demand for stock and flow distributors may be waning. Mouser [Electronics] and DigiKey are functionally like an Amazon.”
• “Airport projects seem to be strong, especially regional airports. I was just at Light + Building. UFO [Lighting] had a fiberoptic system that used lasers instead of LEDs or legacy sources–so that you can go a lot longer in the continuous light. That to me made a lot of sense— it made a lot greater use of fiberoptics technology.”
• “We had a great Lightovation and things have gotten progressively more challenging as things went on…because of some of these changes. When our fuel costs go up as much as they’ve gone up, or you get hit by a tariff that you can’t really pass along…then that impacts our bottom line. I can’t always ask our customers to pay more.”
• “When I was at a [retail based] show in Europe, I saw a product that tracks your retina—where your eye is looking. The camera can track eye movement: if you look to your right, the light will follow where you’re looking.”
• “The (last) is probably the hardest question because so much of it is out of our control. With the uncertainty going on out there, and the changes—are we war? Are we not at war? [laughs] If it was all with my control, but it’s not. You take your car off road and you don’t know if you’ll find a smooth little path or going off a cliff [laughs]. When you tariff Chinese steel and aluminum, American steel and aluminum goes up too [laughs].l If [the Iran War] was not going on, I feel we would be having an excellent year. It’s hard to keep up–it’s not only what day of the week how are things, it’s what time of the day [laughs] We came out of January in great shape! “
• “The distributor relationships and expectations can be challenging— showrooms are not getting the traffic and they often want to blame the manufacturer.”
• “The direct sales model is something we’re working on and seeing how that works for us.”
• “Our new products, from a specifier point of view, are lauded—they haven’t seen anything like it. However, that reception from the specification market, which is new for us, is not generating the level of sales that I’d like it to see. Sometimes specs take 3 years to complete.”
• “I want to say our current model is working well—while the model is complicated. We struggle with our agency model.”
• “I say ‘modestly’ stronger only because 2025 was so strong itself.”
• “We have new acquisitions and new products coming out, we’ve had continued growth. I’m kind of a lighting nerd. I always look to see what other people have. But nothing the last year that’s been, ‘Oh, wow, that’s really unique’.”
• “It is sometimes harder to get into a new distributor than a lighting designer. For me, national accounts are going to be significantly better.”
• “There’s two, once’s pretty cool. Integrated control in a fixture versus stand-alone controls and the second is the control ability of some of your fixtures today, for an example an outdoor fixture you can A) change the color, B) change the wattage or lumens and C) change the photometrics—it’s amazing.”
• “When I went to SALC in Phoenix, all the Waymos pulled up. How will all these driverless vehicles be affected by lighting?”
• “We launch about eight product families a year and it’s challenging to have our reps informed of the new launches. Their attention is understandably all over the place. Year to date, our business is significantly stronger—knock on wood.”
• “As an agency, we’ve just moved into another state but it’s still a new state! We’re still adding people.”
• “We’ve had two monsters [January and February].”
• “We have a lot going for us, we just get need to get some operational things in line. There’s a lot of VE-ing going on the field. As a distributor, we have an issue with more and more manufacturers going direct.”
• “We’re looking for new streams of income and we found some! We found some new projects, and from that aspect we’ll have a better first quarter, better first half than 2025.”’