17 July 2018

Claire’s (formerly Claire’s Accessories) is a speciality retailer of fashionable jewellery and accessories for young women, teens and kids. It was founded in 1961 and is headquartered in Chicago.

In the UK, it reportedly has more than 500 stores and concessions, and one of its major warehouses in the country is in Birmingham. Here, the company has managed to dramatically reduce its energy bills thanks to a smart connected lighting system supplied by enModus. The Chepstow-based firm says its Wattwave technology can make any building smart by transforming the existing cabling infrastructure into a building-wide communications network. 

When combined with a cloud-based platform, enModus says Wattwave delivers connectivity for smart control and intelligence to measure energy usage in real-time across every connected light, asset, circuit or building.

The project for Claire involved using enModus’ system with the warehouse’s mains wiring. This has enabled lights to be connected to the internet, and then monitored and intelligently controlled.

Using real-time measurement, enModus says Claire’s validated a total energy saving of 96 per cent against the replaced light fittings. The company adds that once the solution is deployed throughout the warehouse, it can potentially cut energy costs by £107,000 over five years.

Coupled with reduced energy costs, it’s claimed the project also helped improve the lighting quality and comfort for warehouse staff, and the management of emergency lights by remotely testing them via the cloud. Crucially, there was zero disruption to operations because the enModus solution uses the existing powerlines.

John Wanklyn, VP of sales and marketing at enModus, says: “Claire’s was keen to test out our unique technology to see how it could radically reduce costs and improve its environmental impact with minimal disruption to the busy workforce.

“As well as saving money and reducing CO2, companies can deploy our solution without the need for expensive refits as it uses existing power cabling infrastructure.”

Wanklyn points out that smart lighting is just one application for Wattwave. “Once installed, we enable a building-wide communications network that can deliver other benefits including real-time intelligence on building occupancy and other sensed inputs, plus ultimately control any mains connected asset.”