Lighting accounts for a significant portion of the energy usage at most retail stores. The right lighting can make your product stand out, so you certainly want your store lit up when your customers are milling about the aisles, but how about when the shelves are being stocked? It’s very common for team members to arrive hours before the start of business to sort inventory and refill shelves, and more often than not they just flip on every light switch when they walk in the door. Not only is this wasteful, it might confuse passersby into thinking that you’re open for business.

One of our customers came up with a clever technology-enforced solution: they split their sales floor into two “zones” of lighting, one zone for stocking, controlled by a manual switch; and the other zone for business hours, controlled by SiteSage. They then programmed SiteSage to turn its zone on 20 minutes before the start of business and off 20 minutes after the stores closed. This approach allowed team members to turn on the level of light they needed for stocking shelves (the customer tested the safety and acceptability of the light level ahead of time), but prevented them from wasting energy and confusing passersby with inappropriate light levels while the store was closed.

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