Both Home Depot and Lowes are selling a true 60 watt replacement that is dimable. I paid about 18$ for them. Very happy with them. The home depot bulb does have a slight hum at times. These are the bulbs we should be selling.
Also there are some really good replacements for the t-8 and t-12’s that could really be sold to businesses. The problem is the ballast must be removed.
I had thought about convincing my team to buy both local Lowe’s stores’ stock of these bulbs to sell for profit. Because the biggest complaint from potential buyers is that they are not dimmable.
A lot of people also cannot purchase them because of the price tag. While they are 1/2 of retail cost… $20 per bulb is still pretty darn expensive for most people. I’m not saying there’s really anything that can be done about it, it’s just what I’ve been observing.
Just one tip on LED bulbs in general (as this is what I do)
Most LED replacement bulbs look similar, but that is where the similarities end, I assure you. Between what LED the bulb uses, the circuit design of the driver, the materials of the diffuser (the “bulb” portion) and the method of thermal management, LED bulbs can have a wide variety of performance.
The manufacturer of the e-Watt FIRST bulbs is a reputable one.
-Brando
1551 ordered our first case of 30 – we’ll see how they sell. (Small, small, SMALL town and all that.)
I am a bit concerned that you can buy LED bulbs, non-dimmable, 40W, etc, etc, from Lowes (only 20 miles down the road) for two bucks cheaper… We may have to sell them for less than the $19.99 MSRP.
We can still run in to the same problem. If we push and get $1000 in orders at one time, some may be cash, but people tend to write checks to us. It will start to appear pretty shady if we start asking checks to be written to individuals instead of the school, or if we fund raise on a cash only basis.
We are considering selling the bulbs as a fundraiser, but I’m looking for ideas/suggestions on how to sell them. Since we are not associated with a school or a community, being pretty spread out mainly in suburbia, we don’t have a built in audience to approach. And I don’t want to ask the students to go door-to-door. Anyone have any solutions?
Our local hardware store has agreed to sell them for us if we want them to. Also, word of mouth starting in schools isn’t a bad way to go, methinks. I know the biology teacher across the hall wants to try a few, with the potential of converting over his entire house!(!!!)
Don’t forget about taxes! I saw the bulb for sale at Lowes for $18.98. That’s $20.50 with NY taxes!
I think if we throw in that it is a fundraiser for a good cause, people may forgive the cost a bit as long as it is close to the market rate.
Our team just received the cases we ordered (sponsored by a few parents and mentors - if the bulbs sell, the sponsors get their money back. If they don’t, they get the bulbs.). One of the mentors made a comparison display that holds 4 bulbs with a watt meter to show the energy use. It’s very cool. We will probably rely on sales at parent’s and mentor’s workplaces and with friends and families. We’ve been given permission to sell them at our largest demo of the summer, the Monroe County Fair.
And it would be $20.74 in Los Angeles county!
Can you share this with us? I’d like to maybe do something similar.
Agreed, I believe 1538 has a fantastic display for these lightbulbs as well?
-RC
Well, I wasn’t expecting people to be buying five at a time… Sold 12 today (including one to myself to try out), so the case has already paid for itself and then some… The rest is profit. We’ll see how the rest of the case goes, and then look at the judiciousness of ordering more.
I’ll describe it now and take a photo the next time I’m in the shop!
He built a wooden box and wired in 4 light sockets (porcelain?) Each socket has a on/off light switch underneath it. They are wired in parallel and at one end is an outlet. He provided a watt meter that plugs into the outlet. The four slots are intended for use for a regular 40 watt incandescent bulb, a compact fluorescent bulb, the FIRST bulb and a competitors 40 watt LED bulb for color comparison. At the back he has attached a piece of foam board to provide a surface to show the displacement of the light from the bulbs. Because each bulb has it’s own switch, you can measure the watts for each bulb individually. Or turnthem all on and measure the total output!
From the rest of the description, it sounds like they are wired in parallel.
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Monroe County WHERE?!!
Also, I want to say this: most of the sales tips I’ve seen in this thread so far is almost exactly how I used to sell band candy when I was in high school.
Monroe County, NY (Rochester).
You hooked up candy bars to 115VAC? Cool!
When you turn on more than one light bulb, the wattages add up. I think that makes them in series.
But I will admit that electrical has never been my strong suit. If I really have it backwards, let me know!
If the bulbs were wired in series, they would not operate properly. Each one requires the full 120 volts.
The 120v light bulbs in your home are all wired in parallel, and you can turn them on and off individually, and the wattmeter on your home reads the sum of the power they use.
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So If you had a switch on each bulb in the display set up you could turn them on one at a time to show how much power they use right?
