AN innovative WA product will soon be on the shelves of Wal-Mart and Walgreens following a deal between Lumitex managing director Phil Delich and the US retail giants.
AN innovative WA product will soon be on the shelves of Wal-Mart and Walgreens following a deal between Lumitex managing director Phil Delich and the US retail giants.
The Glowlite, developed by Mr Delich, is a luminous house number visible from 20 metres and powered by two D-cell batteries that do not need re-placing for at least 12 months.
Driven by the frustration of not being able to find a house number late at night, Mr Delich has employed technology used by NASA and major airlines to create the Glowlite.
“It is not a bright light, it glows. It is electro-luminscent technology,” Mr Delich said.
“Normal light globes consume far too much power; it would have only lasted a few days.
“This type of lighting is used to light the instrument panels in aeroplanes, and it is used in space shuttles.
“What I have done is develop the circuit to operate more efficiently than what has been done in the past.”
Mr Delich said developing the circuit had created a good consumer product.
“Its commercial advantage is that it is an efficient electronic circuit. Normally something like this would last four to five weeks, but if it had a limited battery life it wouldn’t work,” he said.
“I did some research and discovered most people were happy with a battery life of six months. This offers 12 months or more.”
Mr Delich has recently returned from America after a road trip showcasing the Glow-lite on the American shopping channel QVC, as well as signing deals with the major retailers.
“QVC is the biggest home shopping network. It is the holy grail of TV selling,” Mr Delich said.
The shopping channel purchased a bulk order of the Glowlites and, as a consequence, Mr Delich appeared for eight minutes.
The sale of several hundred units was a success, he said, given his ‘spot’ was up against the latest CNN war update on March 31.
“I don’t know of any Australian product that has got on there. I would dearly have liked to know, knowing what I was going to expect would have been good,” Mr Delich said.
“It goes live into 80 million homes in North America.”
Glowlite will also feature on America’s second biggest shopping network, Home Shopping Services.
While the home shopping arena was a good market to access, the real carrot on the American trip was discussions with Wal-Mart and Walgreens.
“There are about 3,000 major Wal-Mart stores and 4,000 Walgreens. Walgreens are a very upmarket 7-11. They are on every street corner and they sell everything from fishing gear to medicine and they are open 24 hours. It’s a one-stop shop,” Mr Delich said.
“They have agreed to take it on for trials and we would like to see that happen in the next three months.”
If the sales are high enough during the trial period the retail companies will roll-out the products across their entire American chain.
As for the local market, Lumitex is in the process of creating retail packaging appropriate for Western Australian retail shelves. Lumitex also is developing other lighting products that have attracted attention from major global retailers and manufacturers.
