Displays designed to snag the modern shopper

product. Its screen can give a full or partial view of the product, or completely block it from sight at times, if desired.

Two built-in speakers provide music, sounds effects or spoken words. The Showcase runs an Android operating system (OS), compatible with virtually any video file, and its built-in Wi-Fi allows users to browse and use online videos as well

The iClear, which will launch this spring, displays a life-sized 3-D virtual presentation on to a polycarbonate cutout. It can be used as an information booth or a welcome display, among other things.

Light it up
“Color temperature” is a key phrase in jewelry store display lighting, and several vendors are stepping up with products that will give the jeweler more versatility in terms of “cool” or “warm” lighting ambiances.

At Wessel LED Lighting Systems, sales director Butch McKeown said their lighting system alternates between 3000 and 4500 kelvins (K), providing a warmer look that’s ideal for gold jewelry and some colored stones. The jeweler can work with the extrusions, which are customizable to 1/16 of an inch, to produce a warmer or cooler look depending on the merchandise on display.

“Jewelers often use an even cooler light, 6000K, which works great with platinum, sterling, and diamonds,” McKeown said, “but it makes gold look washed out. The warmer light makes gold look great, but makes platinum dull.

“Our lighting works well with watches: Breitling is one of our big customers. The versatility is helpful with leather goods, too, since you’ll be working with tan one week, and black with gold the next week.”

Howard Gurock, president of Tappan, N.Y.-based Eco-Lite Products said the company has an analogous product that he calls the Hybrid: a combination of warm and cool diodes that provides warmth and sparkle at same time.

“It’s a stem fixture: vertical, or horizontal for inside the case,” he said. “It’s a mixture of 3000K and 6000K.”

He said the company is toying with the idea of making this lighting switchable, meaning it could illuminate just the warm spectrum, just the cool spectrum, or both at the same time.

Gurock said that lighting technology isn’t changing much at the moment, except maybe with regard to efficiency. At present, he says, the Hybrid consumes eight watts per foot. “Maybe in a year or two we’ll be at six watts per foot,” he said.

“Lighting is pretty simple now in that everything is driven by LED,” agreed Jacob Swiger, product manager at Pegasus Lighting based in the Pittsburgh suburb of Beaver Falls, Pa. “LEDs allow fixtures to be very small and low-profile, easy to hide. We have LED tape lights that are literally like putting a piece of masking tape on your display case.

He said that every year, the efficiency continues to improve in relation to the wattage used. The latest innovation is O-LED (O stands for organic), a film that’s printed on the windows of a home that slowly illuminates at night and will be an alternative to lamps.

“Jewelry cases would be an interesting application for that technology,” Swiger said.