‘Light’ before wicket: Kosnic revives All Rounder Cricket megastore
The Project
One of the largest cricket retailers in the world, All Rounder Cricket has grown rapidly since its inception in 2011. It supplies tens of thousands of cricketers with the latest cricket equipment and team wear. With a hugely popular superstore opposite the renowned Headingley Test Cricket Ground in Leeds, it was decided to open a second megastore in Sheffield, incorporating cricket and hockey equipment. The All Rounder Cricket and Hockey store was opened in December 2015 by England cricketer Joe Root. Having invested heavily in technology, the store provides the ultimate cricket retail experience and is supported by an online store
The Brief
The All Rounder Cricket and Hockey store in Sheffield was originally equipped with a mixture of halogen and CFL lamps at opening, which were both inefficient and costly from an electricity and maintenance perspective. Equally, the lighting was not showing the shop and its products at their best, which is extremely important in a retail environment. Local electrical distributor Clifton Lighting recommended Kosnic Lighting Ltd. and tasked the project team to develop a new lighting solution throughout the store.
The Solution
The Kosnic Project Team created and supplied a RELUX lighting design proposal that completely overhauled the existing lighting scheme, changing all lamps to LEDs and selecting the appropriate products according to the usage in different areas of the store.
In the entrance and main browsing area of the shop, 16x 150W LowBay LED luminaires with reflectors were specified. These high performance and low maintenance solutions offer huge energy savings and a long life of 40,000 hours. With premium Samsung SMDs, they provide a superior lumen output of 15,000lm and outstanding colour consistency, making them perfect for the retail environment, while the reflector softens the light for the browsing area of the store.
A further 150W LowBay LED luminaire was specified for the loading bay area, while 6x faceted downlights were selected to light the footwear sales area. These are a simple retrofit for fluorescent downlights, offering high lumen efficiency and energy savings of up to 50 percent compared to traditional fluorescent fittings.
In the cricket net and ‘testing zone’, the old battens were replaced with 4x Kosnic 30W LED panels. As well as offering extremely good glare control, the diffuser is made from polycarbonate so the panels are very strong, making them particularly suited to this section of the store. The panels were surface mounted with one panel made emergency ready using Kosnic’s ‘plug-and-play’ emergency module kit. This features a Li-Ion battery and in the event of a power cut supplies the Kosnic LED panel with a reduced voltage to deliver light for up to three hours.
To minimise the cost for the overall project, existing downlighter and track lighting fittings were kept in the merchandise storage room and upstairs in the hockey equipment area but with all lamps changed to HaloLED LED GU10s. The perfect replacement for halogen lamps, the LED GU10s can provide energy savings of up to 90 percent while also offering a high colour rendering index (CRI) of over 80Ra and a long life of 35,000 hours.
Results
The revamped lighting scheme gives the Sheffield All Rounder Cricket and Hockey store the right look for its customers, helping to make them feel comfortable and at ease while showing off the products at their best. The new scheme has also significantly improved the energy efficiency of the store, bringing down energy usage, electricity bills and maintenance costs.
“The new LED lighting scheme has made such a noticeable difference to the store, giving it a real lift,” says Chris Taylor, Managing Director of All Rounder Cricket Ltd and All Rounder Hockey Ltd. “Although the Sheffield store hasn’t long been open, we were spending significant sums on electricity and had already experienced the need to replace lamps so we wanted an alternative solution. We’ve been really impressed by the support given by Kosnic, the team’s understanding of the retail environment, our specific needs and the ability to combine these into an effective solution that is working really well for us.”
Adrian Frearson, Director at electrical distributor Clifton Lighting, adds: “We want to offer the best to our clients and therefore only work with brands that we trust – it’s embarrassing and costly to have clients return and complain about products. Kosnic is one of our trusted brands and we’ve worked with the Kosnic Project Team on many occasions and are always impressed by the team’s solutions. The product is dependable and the level of quality and customer service is unsurpassed. For the All Rounder Cricket project, the Kosnic team quickly and efficiently delivered a RELUX lighting design that illustrated all improvements to the lighting scheme. The results are very impressive and have transformed the store, making it an even better retail environment and product showcase for customers.”
