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[quote="starfire"]I'm wondering what the best approach may be in selling a neon plant? Any ideas?

My DH only wants to sell his plant together as a unit so that he's not left with odds and ends. However, I don't think people can afford to purchase the whole plant.

Have you found that selling anything related to neon has been hard? I've noticed that there have been quite a few plants for sale! It seems like neon is a thing of the past especially since LED seems to be everywhere and cheaper :roll:[/quote]

The used neon equipment market has not been very good for a few years, ever since a particular individual, who used to be active in this market, sold equipment of questionable quality (read: "refurbished" junk) for pennies on the dollar. Some of it was not even usable for neon fabrication, but was sold as such anyway. Consequently, our industry came to expect that such equipment should sell for next to nothing (although that is all some of it was worth IMO), regardless of how good or bad it was. IMO he is single handedly responsible for the demise in price of what [u]good quality[/u] used equipment should sell for. Add to this the unsettling number of neon shops who are closing their doors lately and trying to sell their equipment just to get rid of it and the price of used equipment has dropped even more.

Parting out the equipment is certainly an option, but it is usually a trade-off. You may make more money with that approach, but you will also have a lot more time and effort in doing so.

I assume your comment that "neon is a thing of the past" is the reason for selling the equipment? To be blunt, IMO that is one of the big problems with neon people. Instead of getting out there and trying to do something about declining sales, many of them sit back and let it happen and blame everything and everyone except themselves. (Yeah Juan, I'm preaching again!)

As for LED's being cheaper, that is pure false propaganda generated by the large LED manufacturers and adopted by the smaller ones as being gospel. Do the research and you will see for yourself. But if you do, don't rely on what the LED manufacturers are saying because most of it is simply not true. At this point there have been enough independent studies done comparing different light sources for sign illumination. (Initial cost, the same level of brightness vs. power consumption, lumen degradation, long term maintenance, etc.) It is fact that, with the possible exception of red, in the long run neon (when done correctly) is still less costly and far more efficient than LED to operate. With red, neon and LED's are very close to each other with LED's usually having a slight advantage in power consumption vs. light output, but slightly behind neon in the other categories.

Mark

Mark,

I for one would like anything you could forward. I am not looking to do battle with LED bangers. I carry the torch for neon. The past the future. But I do want to be informed. Pros and cons

YYZ,

Your info also

Remember DON'T HATE

Mark - I haven't been keeping track of anything. I seldom log in here because outside of the buy and sell areas - this forum is dead. I can't help it if you walked away from the active forum because you couldn't whine your way to special treatment.

Mark, you're the one who is using these comparisons to support your claims - not me - so if someone calls you out on it, the onus is on you to back up your claims with said comparisons. This has been a pattern on yours for years to turn things around on other people. Don't cite studies, articles, advertisements or comparisons as the basis for your arguments if you cannot allow others to read them or even prove that you've seen them.

We all know that private comparisons of some kind exist. I've done comparisons with other LED companies but really don't care to compare with neon. We all know that these "private comparisons* will be branded as biased and anyone whose product is not portrayed well will question the accuracy and honesty of the results. I wouldn't trust you to do the comparison and you wouldn't trust me, and that's why I've long been calling for a neutral party - like a magazine or university - to create a neutral comparison and make the results public.

For what it's worth, *that other forum* is in fact doing a *neutral* comparison with 12 different products. Many vendors have supplied product, such as EGL, Voltarc, Agilight, Philips, etc. Other companies such as GE, Sloan and USLED are being included even though they didn't volunteer the product. The person behind the comparison is a *sign guy* first and foremost and if anything, is leery of LEDs while supporting the proven history of neon. It will be a fair comparison that all sides will have to live with the results, good or bad.

For those others on here who are asking questions, I'll say the following:

1) Many people selling LEDs are simply speculators trying to cash in on a new technology, and are often nothing more than importers who don't test (or care?) about the quality of the product they are re-selling. This includes *neon* companies like France and Allanson.

2) Some big name companies have been more cautious with their claims than the speculator types, but haven't done enough to distance themselves from the false claims - which there has been.

3) Most of the claims were made years ago when the usage of LEDs was not as prevalent and not as much was known about the exact long term performance of the product in sign applications. It is very rare that you will see inflated claims by a *name* company that manufactures LED products for signage.

4) Not all LEDs are equal. I repeat, not all LEDs are equal. In most cases, you get what you pay for and this explains many of the failures. Others can be explained by companies not paying close enough attention to quality control and/or making risky decisions. This doesn't mean that LED technology itself is not sound - it means that the way the technology was implemented was flawed. This is the case with companies like Permlight who have had large scale failures.

Comparisons? I've shared a lot of details on the other forum and if people would like specific answers then perhaps we should have a more open Q&A thing happen in the lighting forum. Some things I'll be able to answer, other things will have to remain private, just like any company would protect its own methods and keep certain info away from competitors.

Here is some random info based on some informal data collected on "white light" signs and channel letters.

During the past year, I have put a light meter onto about 75 (give or take) signs in my area. Some are new or recently re-lamped, others older. I was trying to establish some rough numbers on how bright certain types of signs typically are and how certain products stack up.

Freshly re-lamped fluorescent box/cabinet signs will be around 200 foot candles on the face, some as high as 225 fc (close lamps, etc). Within 3-6 months, this drops to under 150 fc. The speed of that drop depends on whether it is summer or winter.

A "nicely lit" sign face will typically be around 125 fc.

Approximately half of the signs measured were in the 100~150 fc range, with 100 fc being about as low as I would consider "adequately illuminated". About a third fall below this level. Only a small number are actually "really nice and bright" and this is typically when they are new or freshly re-lamped.

With channel letters, the numbers are somewhat similar, but it's harder to know what's inside - ie: tri-phosphor or good old 6500 white. Only a small portion of neon channel letters are "really bright" and this is usually only when they're new. One sign I measured was over 300 fc, but when peeking into the weep holes, there was 5 strokes of neon in an 15" wide letter - which I would consider overkill. About half of white channel letters fell into the 100~125 fc range, with the remainder (maybe 40%) being in the 75 fc range (less than adequate).

With LED channel letters, there are some new projects out there that exceed 150 fc. About half of them fall into the "inadequate" category and the majority of those are imported, low grade products. A small percentage could be considered "failures" with dark spots or entirely too dim appearance (as in 25 fc). Around a third of the LED channel letters would fall into the 100 fc range, or just adequate. This is where many of the current big players sit (Sloan, USLED, Gelcore), though they all have new products that have better performance.

I should note that there were a small number of visible failures with ALL technologies mentioned - with neon being the largest culprit. I would say fluorescent, but we all know that those lamps need to be changed regularly and having burned out lamps is different than having failed channel letters that are lit with neon or LED. To be fair, these signs are likely older than those illuminated with LEDs and it is simply a matter of time until the failures balance out - or LEDs even exceed neon in terms of "outages" or "extreme depreciation".

No one technology is perfect. All have maintenance issues, All have strengths and weaknesses depending on application, geographic location, etc... The biggest problem with LEDs is cost and general knowledge by designers, specifiers and sign shops in terms of understanding quality vs crap, and how to use the product properly. Many companies - even the big ones - understate how many modules are required to match the brightness of "a one foot stroke" of neon. This is partly because there is no standard for said stroke of neon, and partly because their power consumption figures wouldn't look as good if they required more product to be used.

Neon isn't going away, but it has to get used to the fact that going forward, it will be used as a specialty product and not a staple. Just like Harley Davidson making street bikes, it's only a matter of time before all the big neon companies offer a parallel line of LEDs next to their tubes, trannies, etc.