Client Profile - Rice Village Diamonds

Ron Maor, owner of Rice Village Diamonds in Houston Texas, recently noticed that the LED lighting in his showcases wasn’t as bright as it used to be. In addition to some of the segments of lighting being completely out, many of them were flickering. Like many jewelry stores in Texas, Ron purchased what were at the time beautiful showcases from one of the Bailey, Banks & Biddle stores that were liquidated when the parent company, Finlay Enterprises, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy back in August 2009. Most of the showcases that were liquidated were manufactured by Faubion Associates, Inc. in Dallas Texas. These showcases featured a dropping floor that would enable the jewelry to be safely lowered into a secure box below the showcase. At that time, LED lighting technology was just beginning to enter market, and these showcases included LED lighting manufactured by MK Digital in California. The design of MK Digital’s lighting system utilized an elongated circuit board, also sometimes called SMD (Surface Mount Device), with the LED’s spaced out every few inches.

They also used small computer fans positioned every foot or so to help remove the heat. This was a state of the art lighting system back in the day, but a decade hence, most of these LED showcase lights are due for an upgrade/replacement. Since MK Digital is no longer manufacturing LED showcase lighting, the question is, how can the lights be fixed?

Vladimir Shilnikov, Eastern Lighting’s installation tech and Warren Wang, President of Eastern Lighting, examined the situation and came up with a solution. First, one of the original extrusions from a showcase was removed. After sliding one of the circuit boards out of the extrusion, it could be seen that the computer fans were finally burning out.

Once the fans stop working, the system overheats and it’s only a matter of time before the LED’s fail. It was then determined that by attaching customized brackets to the original MK Digital circuit boards, the DLX Series full spectrum cool white showcase light could be retrofitted directly onto the original lighting system. Since the original extrusions were much wider than the new DLX Series extrusion, the new lights were hidden from the customer’s viewing angle, maintaining the original esthetic of the showcase.

The new light is also fully adjustable, unlike the original. Now, Ron’s showcases have gone from fading and flickering light, to bright, crisp, full spectrum light that reveals the exquisite beauty of the diamond jewelry.

If your store has Faubion showcases with LED lighting from MK Digital that is starting to fail, give us a call 1800-839-3604, or visit our booth at The JCK Show in Las Vegas in the Essentials Pavilion – B65051.