BigChinaLED at The Show
No company epitomizes BigChinaLED more than Acuity’s neighbor, James Trading/James Industries. We first saw James Trading at Strategies in Light (pictured above) earlier this year, where they had a 40 x 40 booth in the very front of the show. It really wasn’t a booth as much as it was eight tables thrown together with a bunch of fixtures. Perhaps their booth did not arrive and that very well could be the case. The point is that James Trading is the perfect example of BigChinaLED and its devastating affect on our entire industry.
I receive their emails daily as they easily penetrate my spam filter using a number of aliases:
- [email protected]
- James LED in Stock
- All your LED needs
- LED Hazardous Location Lighting
- LED Hazardous Location Lighting and Cannabis Light
They find me on Skype and Linked In and Facebook. They complete the lead information box on our website and they are relentless. BigChinaLED will sell to me, they will sell to you, they will sell to your customer and to your customer’s customer.
They used to push LED tubes, corncob and panel lights. After helping to drive profitability out of those commodity products, they have moved into hazardous and horticulture in an effort to help ruin those markets as well.
At LIGHTFAIR, James Trading is in a prime spot—right next to Acuity. The Acuity booth will be packed, as it always is and Acuity will promote lots of great products as well as their Atrius Solution Builder, which we really like. Acuity will focus on the upsell and the higher margin products and services. Yet, as their audience drifts to the BigChinaLED booth, they will see some pretty good products—and given the price differential pretty good will win many times.
Originally BigChinaLED was in the back corner of our tradeshows and they tried to sell by the container load. Over time, they added warehouses in Florida and California, but you still had to wire the money to China and usually incur a $45 wire transfer fee. Contractors didn’t like that. Now BigChinaLED has lots of U.S. stock, they take credit cards and they have huge, beautiful sleek booths at our best tradeshows.
When you look at the layoffs in our industry and our low margins, you can thank BigChinaLED, and the companies who buy from them.