Partnership with Salvation Army helps combat generational poverty

Arkon Power recently sponsored the local Salvation Army’s 4th Annual Doing the Most Good Dinner, an event that generates proceeds for the organization’s Pathway of Hope program.

“It’s a program to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty,” said Lindsay Crossland, director of development for the Salvation Army of Clearwater & Upper Pinellas. “We want to make these changes for good, instead of keeping people in this cycle of poverty for generations.”

Arkon Power chose to be involved in the Doing the Most Good event and support the Salvation Army because it values the community in which it operates, according to Director of Business Development Eleni Lelekis.

“Our goal is not only to help our customers improve as places of business, but to help the communities we serve in Florida and beyond improve as places to live,” she said. “We value everyone we live and work with not only as customers, but as people.”

The Arkon Power team attended the 4th Annual Doing the Most Good Dinner, held at the Sheraton Sand Key Resort on Sept. 28, to learn more about how it can assist the Salvation Army in its mission to serve. Through Pathway of Hope, the Army provides individualized services to families with children to allow them to break the cycle of crisis and vulnerability that repeats generation after generation. The program seeks to address the root causes of poverty, Crossland said.

Last year, the Salvation Army served more than 57,000 people in Clearwater and Upper Pinellas County. For its sponsorship of the annual Doing the Most Good dinner, Arkon Power will be featured on the Salvation Army truck in the coming year. The truck is not only driven throughout Pinellas County on a daily basis, but it has also appeared at special events and media opportunities, including the Tampa Bay Rays Christmas in July game, Red Kettle Campaign kick-off with the Tampa Bay Lightning, Walmart Fill-the-Truck events, Red Kettle Campaign opportunities with Bay News 9, Angel Tree media opportunities with ABC, and many more.

“We’re truly honored to see our name associated with an organization as devoted to improving the plight of the poor and disadvantaged as the Salvation Army,” Lelekis said. “It’s a partnership Arkon Power hopes to continue for many years to come.”

Email Info@ArkonPower.com to learn more about Arkon Power and its involvement in the local community.

New hires bring team into “peak form,” according to company executives.

Arkon Power has continued to grow its sales and operations team, adding John Johnson as a new sales representative and Richard Elzey as a contractor.

Johnson has been in sales for nearly a decade and has handled products from textbooks to collegiate apparel and accessories. He spent five years as a pharmaceutical sales rep for Pfizer before moving into the LED space about two years ago.

“I’m very familiar with the lighting sales cycle,” Johnson said. “Because it’s a slightly longer cycle, it’s all about establishing a good relationship, and you really have to listen to the customer. I think that’s true in every business, but especially in lighting sales.”

As Arkon continues to increase its market penetration, Johnson sees great potential to grow the company’s name recognition and increase sales numbers.

“The great thing is LEDs have now been around long enough that people have studied up on them and have good information,” he said. “You’re speaking with people that already know LEDs are the best route for their company.”

Elzey has 25 years of contracting experience, both in the field and as senior instructor for the Florida-based Contractors Institute. He teaches examination preparation and continuing education classes around the state and holds a certified general contractors license and various specialized licenses. Arkon Director of Business Development Eleni Lelekis said he’s added considerably to the company’s capabilities.

“Richard has been an invaluable addition to the team,” she said. “He offers an attention to detail that I know our customers are going to appreciate.”

Lelekis said Elzey and Johnson have shown initiative since joining the team and are poised to help build Arkon’s hard earned reputation as a leader in lighting solutions.

“Our sales and operations teams are now in peak form,” Lelekis said. “We look forward to seeing these new relationships grow with time.”

Email Info@ArkonPower.com to learn more about the Arkon Power team and its capabilities.

The market for LEDs is strong and growing stronger as the technology becomes more affordable and buyers gain confidence.

Arkon LED founder Eleni Lelekis got into the light-emitting diode business because she held a conviction lighting could be done better. Now, nearly five years down the road, that conviction is being proven true many times over.

Industry-wide revenues from LEDs have grown at a compound rate of about 13% per year since 2010, and market share has grown from just under 12% in 2012 to more than 25%, according to a U.S. Department of Energy report.

Ed Crawford, CEO of Philips Lighting North America, has said the decreased cost of LEDs has caused a “paradigm shift” in the lighting industry that has “changed everything.”

Lelekis has been saying the same thing for nearly a half decade.

“We told anyone who would listen when we were starting out that this was the first major technology shift in illumination since Edison invented the light bulb,” Lelekis said. “Seeing LEDs take over the market from legacy technology was a fair accomplishment.”

Now, Forbes Investing and other market forecasters are predicting the LED lighting market will grow 45% per year through 2019. By 2020, LEDs are expected to account for at least 80% of the entire lighting market. At an LED market share of 84%, domestic lighting energy consumption would be reduced 40% every year, according to DOE’s Energy Savings Forecast of Solid-State Lighting in General Illumination Applications. That would save 261 terawatt-hours of electricity, worth more than $26 billion at today’s energy prices and equivalent to the energy consumed by nearly 24 million U.S. homes.

Companies like Arkon LED and their customers stand to benefit from that kind of growth. Even as the cost of LEDs continues to decrease, making the money-saving technology increasingly affordable for businesses and individual consumers, the market could generate almost $100 billion by 2020, Forbes said.

That’s the exact kind of market flip Lelekis predicted when she joined the LED industry in 2011.

Arkon LED has already begun riding the wave, fanning out from its humble beginnings servicing the southeast United States to working with companies across the country and in Canada.

“We’ve gotten to the point that there is really no job we cannot provide lights for,” Lelekis said. “Arkon LED can provide lights for literally any company looking at LEDs. We can all be partners in energy—and money—savings.”

To learn more about the LED market or Arkon Power, email Info@ArkonPower.com.

Arkon LED is a U.S.-based company, but a number of other countries have developed into leading players in the light emitting diode sector. China in particular has one of the world’s fastest growing LED manufacturing industries. To stay on top of what’s happening in the Far East and elsewhere, Arkon has positioned an in-house purchaser in Hong Kong.

As the company’s foreign purchasing agent, Clement Yuen brings multinational experience to the Arkon LED team. Yuen graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, before working in sales, marketing, purchasing and manufacturing in multiple industries, including toys, sporting goods and computers. Yuen has worked in China and Hong Kong for the last 20 years and now turns his expertise in supply chain management to the LED market.

“With experience living in both the U.S. and China, Yuen is uniquely positioned to act as Arkon LED’s foreign liaison,” LED Sales Guy Greg Papandrew said. “We couldn’t be more fortunate to have someone with his supply chain and manufacturing expertise on the ground in the Eastern Hemisphere at all times.”

Papandrew first met Yuen on a fact finding trip to Hong Kong in 2014. The two have quickly developed a working relationship that allows Arkon to find the best solutions for its clients’ lighting needs, wherever they are in the world.

“I was immediately struck with Arkon’s willingness to learn about LED manufacturing the world over,” Yuen said. “I only hope to contribute to the company’s goal of being a true global player in this industry.”

To learn more about Arkon’s growing sales and manufacturing team, please contact us at Info@ArkonPower.com .

PCB Sales Guru Greg Papandrew Announces Move to Archon Power

• Founded Multi-National Bare Board Group
• Drove Growth to Earn BBG a Spot on the INC. 5000
• Author of PCB Basics for Dummies®
• Instrumental in 200W Shoebox Install Shown Above

The guy that literally wrote the book on selling printed circuit boards has officially announced he has joined the LED sales revolution underway at Archon Power. “LEDs are the wave of the future,” Papandrew said. “I’ve decided to step away from the business I built over the past decade because I feel so strongly about the quality of Archon’s product and the importance of its mission.”

Papandrew has more than 20 years of sales experience, and while he prefers the humble title “Sales Guy,”  he has extensive experience in offshore manufacturing, supply chain management and building creative marketing plans for business. Papandrew has led numerous sales and marketing workshops and spoken at countless industry events during his 20 years in the PCB business. He has been widely published in industry magazines and is the author of the popular PCB Basics for Dummies® book.

“I couldn’t be more excited to be joining the Archon Power team,” Papandrew said. “My number one mission is to help my clients make the brightest investment they can make.”

TECH TIP OF THE MONTH:
LIQUID LENSES MAKE CREE EVEN BETTER

When CREE developed its latest LED light source in 2011, it used two V-shaped grooves in the diagonals on the chips to increase the area of the light-emitting surface. The luminous efficiency skyrocketed, but the grooves made it hard to achieve precise light distribution. To fix the problem, Archon’s lights use proprietary liquid lenses.

For more information about anything in this newsletter, please contact Shea Gibbs at Info@ArkonPower.com