Blizzard Lighting offers an effective yet simple process: "service, parts, and after-sale support. "
Smaller and better. Those are two words that can describe today’s lighting fixtures as well as a Wisconsin manufacturer of them: Blizzard Lighting LLC in Waukesha, Wisc.
“We’re not encumbered by being a big corporate company,” says Director of Sales and Marketing Frank Luppino. “And so we’re very fast in realizing and creating technology.”
In addition to innovation in its fixtures, Blizzard strives to offer “better quality, better color mixing, better technology, more features—for a better value,” Luppino notes. “A majority of the products we offer that are right for churches have ETL certification testing, which is independent testing, and they can be installed anywhere in the world.”
Church Designer: Your website says "Stage lights for performers by performers." How did the precedence of offering high quality products through a small and nimble company come about?
Luppino: Business partners Will [Komassa] and Bob [Mueller] were musicians and met in a band. Will started the company because he found a need in the market for quality lights. He’s also a lawyer and a theatre major, and as a musician, he has a passion for the lighting field. A number of employees here are musicians, DJs, MCs, and many actually started in this industry via a production company—they are working users of this product. So they have knowledge of installing product.
Frank Luppino, Director of Sales & Marketing, Blizzard Lighting LLC, Waukesha, WI
When you put that category of people together it’s pretty amazing. Every other Friday morning we have company meetings for an exchange of ideas … how can we make it better? And everybody is involved in that.
We are the only company in the industry that final assembles or QCs every item before it ships. This policy and process limits the amount of issues we have in the field.
Church Designer: AVL designers, contractors and consultants working with churches know that they need solid support from a manufacturer, because oftentimes the tech staff running the lights and maintaining them are a mish mash of experienced people and volunteers. How does Blizzard cater to this unique makeup of end users in the church market?
Luppino: We have qualified technicians on staff, and we have most parts in stock. We can give return authorization to get gear fixed at any hour day or night through our online log in or during normal business hours via call in. We’ll take care of you. It’s an effective yet simple process: service, parts, and after-sale support.
We also have the best warranty on our products; Blizzard offers a two-year warranty on all our products. In addition, there are lots of churches that use battery-powered LED up-lights. Most manufacturers in our industry offer 90 days to six months as their warranty. We offer a one-year full replacement on batteries, then a pro-rated 1/24th after that.
Three years of warranty is what it adds up to. That’s unprecedented in our industry.
Church Designer: Blizzard is touted as the first company to offer 5-in-1 LED technology. What is it about your small company’s culture and mission that propels this kind of vision?
Luppino: We’re very fast in realizing and creating technology because we’re not encumbered by being a big corporate company. We have a culture of being creative and jumping on things and engineering or re-engineering product ideas to make them a reality.
We very much love to listen to the customer—what they need and want. We are small and focused. There are lots of good ideas out there from people who use product. It can be a pastor, installer, user, etc., we love to take that and act on it much faster than other companies because of our culture of velocity. I’ll help design layouts. Send me a CAD and I’ll give input; I’ll help specify.
Church Designer: How rapidly do church end users (and specifiers for church projects and worship spaces) adopt new technologies as they relate to lighting and LED in particular? The return on investment due to energy savings has to be a big selling point.
Luppino: Two years ago church end users were still behind the curve on that. A number of large churches were still using rack systems and it was terrible. But in past year or so, the specifiers have really come on board with an attitude of ‘we need to do LED; let’s find the best one.’
“We’re very fast in realizing and creating technology because we’re not encumbered by being a big corporate company.”
—Frank Luppino, Director of Sales & Marketing, Blizzard Lighting LLC, Waukesha, WI
I’d like to see designers have a more open mind about which products they specify. They’re getting better about adopting new technology and not just going to mainstream companies. Now Blizzard is considerably better recognized than it used to be, but sometimes designers simply specify what they’ve always specified; the names they know. But that’s changing. They’re opening their minds because we offer better colors, better mixing.
To answer on the point of ROI, it depends on the size of the church and how many fixtures they’re putting in. Where ROI used to be five years, we’re down under two now and sometimes it’s as little as one year.
Church Designer: What new advancements in lighting technology and/or control do you think will have a big impact on the church market throughout 2016, and why?
Luppino: The biggest change for the market from our product line is a particular series, the Colorize Series. It’s convection-cooled, has wireless DMX, and it’s any-fi wireless. In the Colorize Series we’re the first in the market with a wireless chip to work with multifacets of other companies’ wireless, all in one fixture.
Blizzard Lighting's Colorise Quadra in white.
So now, if a church is expanding and using products from other manufacturers, ours plays with their technology. It’s not just proprietary. This type of technology advancement is huge for the church market.
Coming down the pike for control, I see a technology that’s out there that gives the ability to have a hot spot, take your iPad or smart phone, and link up with an individual device that has DMX output to it, that has wireless. So I see the ability to control lights without having to use as many wires. More lights, less wires—effectively and without issues.
Installers will complain about wireless causing issues and how they’re having to run 500 feet of wire up to lights. Take a megachurch and they have a huge wireless Internet with 500 devices banging on it at the same time. With lesser quality DMX it will cause issues with the wireless DMX. But with the technology coming down the pike, we’re overcoming these issues. And that’s a huge step forward.
