Wrap-up coverage of Chain Store Age's 49th annual SPECS

Store Development and Facilities

Store development and facilities professionals from some of the nation's biggest retail and restaurant chains gathered in Dallas to attend Chain Store Age's 49th annual SPECS Conference, at the Hilton Anatole Hotel. The event attracted professionals involved in the design, planning, and construction of stores and restaurants, along with those in facilities management.

The show combined a premier educational program — featuring more than 30 individual workshop sessions — and dynamic keynote presentations with plenty of business networking opportunities and a lively exhibit floor.

The educational program included workshops in seven targeted tracks: Facilities, Planning & Design, Food-service, Ground-Up Construction/Remodeling, Tenant Improvement Construction/Remodeling, Business Strategies, and — new this year — Real Estate Development.

Also new this year, SPECS partnered with a charitable foundation, the Retail Orphan Initiative (RetailROI), which brings together retailers, consultants and suppliers to help orphaned children around the globe. Founder Greg Buzek discussed how SPECS attendees can get involved and help the group in its efforts.

NETWORKING: SPECS is designed to facilitate business partnering and networking, and this year's show was no exception.

In addition to coming together on the show floor and during workshop sessions, attendees gathered at breaks and meals. Many retailers also participated in the fourth annual SPECS Face-to-Face Information Exchange, which provided an ideal opportunity for retailers to lay out their business needs with suppliers in a direct and time-efficient manner.

The 50th Annual SPECS Conference will be held March 16-19, 2014, at the Gay lord Texan, in Grapevine, Texas. Updates will be posted on specsshow.com.

Take Center Stage

Solution Center Snapshots

The newest products and services from suppliers in store development, construction and facilities management were showcased in the SPECS 2013/Solution Center.

The exhibit floor offered the retailers, architects and other specifiers at the show a wide range of solutions, from flooring and signage options to painting contractors and maintenance providers to HVAC equipment and electrical services.

Lighting up sales:

LED lighting designed specifically for retail

It's easy to take good lighting for granted. We tend to notice bad lighting, however, the very second we're exposed to it, standing out as it does like a flashing neon sign with a couple of letters missing.

In retail, quality lighting is crucial — for the ambiance of the shopping experience, for the clarity of product displays, for employee morale and for the bottom line. Dim or harsh lighting can scare off customers; wasteful lighting can be a CFO's worst nightmare.

Enter LEDs, long hailed as the savior of commercial lighting. But early LEDs drew criticism from consumers and businesses as being designed for energy efficiency over aesthetics, function over form. A true lighting solution for retail, combining valuable cost-saving opportunities and quality lighting performance, had yet to be achieved.

In 2002, LED innovator Tony Moore set out to solve this problem and create a niche for LED products specifically intended for retail merchandise illumination. "The need was clear," Moore said, "that nobody had made a solution for T-8 bulb retrofit to LED in show-cases and store fixtures."

Evolving the products through several generations, his company, LEDingEDGE Lighting, Inc., now boasts a full line of LED solutions for retail, designed for total performance: saving energy, reducing maintenance costs, giving long life to retail fixtures and delivering the long-sought-after "perfect light." And whereas the majority of LEDs are manufactured overseas, LEDingEDGE uses primarily American-made components and materials, and the products are 100% assembled in the United States.

LEDingEDGE LED luminaries are offered in 1.7-in. incremental sizing, with three brightness levels — general purpose, super bright and ultra bright — and three color temperatures — warm white, neutral white and cool white. The flexibility enables manufacturers and retailers to use the precise size and light output required for any application, and the low-power usage means a higher lumen output that burns less energy.

Additionally, the company can adapt its standard line of LED products to create dynamic luminaires to suit custom architectural and merchandising designs, including embedded fixtures where the LED isn't visible to shoppers.

Another of the company's core advantages lies in the superior color of its products, enabled through a binning protocol called HyperDUV. Traditionally, LED makers use a 16-bin variant within a color designation, which assumes a fairly wide margin of error. With HyperDUV, LEDingEDGE is able to narrow the color variances down to a 4-bin standard and a significantly higher Color Rendering Index (CRI) light output level.

To learn more about the LEDingEDGE competitive advantage for retailers, visit www.LEDingEDGE.com,where you can spec your projects with color matrix matching systems and use the ROI calculator to determine the precise return on your investment.

Best of SPECS

Oldcastle BuiidingEnvelope took the top spot in the 20th annual Best of SPECS awards. The Terrell, Texas-based company provides products specified to close the building envelope, including custom-engineered curtain walls and window walls, architectural windows, storefront systems, doors and skylights.

Rounding out the awards were Groom Construction Co., Salem, Mass., a general contracting and construction management firm; and Atlas Sign Industries, Riviera Beach, Fla., a national full-service sign company.

The companies honored in the Best of SPECS awards were chosen by the retail attendees at the show. The judging criteria were based on booth presentation, salesmanship, product/service knowledge and overall support of SPECS.

Spotlight On: Energy Efficiency

By Marianne Wilson

Think your company has done all it can with regard to energy conservation? Well, think again. Significant opportunities for energy efficiency still exist in the retail sector, with a 29% savings on average, Maria Vargas, directorof the U.S. Department of Energy's Better Buildings Challenge, told attendees at the SPECS session, "Introduction to the Better Buildings Challenge."

"Despite the many cost-effective opportunities, however, persistent barriers still exist," Vargas said.

These barriers include lack of senior management buyin, lack of a skilled work force, lack of information (with a need for unbiased information) and an "I've already done it" mentality. Another big barrier: not integrating energy efficiency into business planning.

There are also some roadblocks specific to the retail sector, Vargas noted, including a tendency to over-light based on outdated assumptions of what is necessary to make a property and shopping experience attractive.

"Also, in retail, customer comfort and the shopping experience take precedence over energy performance," she said.

To help overcome the barriers to greater energy efficiency and drive action, the U.S. Department of Energy has launched a program, called the "Better Buildings Challenge."

"Better Buildings promotes energy efficiency as a top-priority energy resource," Vargas explained.

The Better Buildings Challenge, which is part of the larger Better Buildings Initiative, is a voluntary leadership initiative that asks public, private and nonprofit organizations to make a public commitment to energy efficiency. With a goal of making Ame