What color is it, really??

So you're going shopping.  You have some fun money to spend or you're in search of the perfect outfit for an event coming up.  You think about where you want to go, how much you want to spend, and if you need new shoes...But I know what you haven't thought of.  Does the color of the lighting in the store you're going to shop in really matter?  Have you thought about if their lighting will affect how colors appear to you?  How they look with your skin tone?

 

Ever tried on and found the perfect pair of black pants only to find out when you got home that they were in fact really dark blue?  And the last time you checked you weren't color blind.

 

Ever spent an hour getting a makeover in a high end cosmetics store or navigated the labyrinth of department store counters looking for the perfect shade of foundation and when you looked at yourself out in the sunlight, clearly the skin care consultant missed your olive undertones!?

So much time and money wasted because of poorly designed lighting.  And to add insult to injury you have to waste time returning your ill-purchased products in hopes of getting all of your money back.  Who has time for that??

Not only does this waste your time and could waste your money but what kind of experience was it?  Good?  Bad? For sure, irritating. You may have had the most helpful sales associate.  You may have found great deals.  But not getting what you paid for really affects your opinion of the retailer, to be sure.  If they really cared about your shopping experience, about how you spend your time and about how you spend your money, would they really allow bad lighting to showcase their products in their dressing rooms or on their sales floors?  Would they knowingly hire lighting consultants and electrical engineers who don't know or care about the customer experience? 

At Larson Binkley this is the only thing we think about when considering the light colors, levels and placement of lights in the retail dressing rooms and in the retail spaces we design.  Consumers have the right to know that what they are looking at in the mirror is an accurate representation of what those pants or that dress will look like then they get them home.  Cosmetics are very personal, and sometimes UNRETURNABLE once opened so the quickest way to lose a woman's brand loyalty is to sell her something that doesn't make her feel fabulous. 

Taking the time and using our expertise to correctly light a space is a matter of responsibility and honoring the customer's time, money and experience in the store.  It's part of making the shopper comfortable.  It's what we do.  We are constantly looking for ways to live up to our commitment of "Perfecting Comfort to Optimize Human Experience" in every building and retail space we design.  We are Larson Binkley.  Engineering a better experience.

www.larsonbinkley.com

Have a greener kitchen.

We’re all about “improving the experience” around here at Larson Binkley.  It’s in our culture.  It’s in our design process.  We’re thinking all the time about how our clients experience us, about how their customers experience them and about how our employees experience our own work environment.  We look for ways to make those experiences more comfortable and enjoyable.  Chris Larson has challenged us, in everything that we do, that we are “Perfecting Comfort to Optimize the Human Experience.”

As a member Larson Binkley’s Culture Team, I am tasked with our team mission to “To make everyone feel welcome, taken care of, and part of the LBI family.  To create a fun and safe environment that fosters creativity, professional growth, and risk taking in its employees.  To empower the employees to feel like they are valuable players in the company and take ownership in their successes.”  As a woman, and probably more so because I’m a mom, I take our Culture Team mission very seriously. 

I had a group of clients in recently and I really had to take a hard look at their experience in our office in terms of simple hospitality and global responsibility.  It was an early meeting and I had picked up bagels and coffee that morning and was feeling pretty pleased that I was going to have an opportunity to make them feel welcomed by offering them breakfast.  They arrived and the boxes were opened and very quickly I found myself scrambling around in our kitchen for plates, napkins, coffee cups.  I served those bagels that day to a group of a very well respected architects on mismatched paper plates, plastic knives and Chipotle napkins leftover from a lunch and learn.

 I was mortified.  That table setting screamed “We weren’t prepared for your visit!”  And even worse “We don’t care about the environment!”  None of which was true, we had prepared technically for the meeting very thoroughly, but our hospitality, the human comfort piece, was lacking. 

We are very dedicated to preserving natural resources and conserving energy here.  We have 31,299,531 square feet of LEED certified projects in 46 states.  We have a great program for recycling in our office.  But in the kitchen we were behind.

That day, I scarified trees for those paper plates and napkins and contributed to the landfill with plastic knives covered with cream cheese.  Our integrity had been compromised… 

Our Culture Team approached Chris with an idea to enable us to “walk the walk if we’re going to talk the talk” to our clients about sustainability and energy conservation as well as allowing us to really welcome and take care of our clients and our own employees when they are in our office.  Our team researched and found out we were spending around $500 per year in paper and plastic goods.  That was way too much.

We proposed replacing those paper and plastic products with reusable china dishes and silverware. 

We also installed an energy efficient dishwasher which uses less water and soap than washing dishes by hand.  The carbon footprint of our dishes being transported only happens once as opposed to paper plates being driven around the country on an ongoing basis. 

 

We can’t wait for you to visit us, enjoy a treat and a nice cup of coffee, from our green kitchen.


***Nikki has been plumbing designer for Larson Binkley Inc. in Overland Park, KS since 1993. Recently promoted to Vice President, she currently holds the position of Waterflow Department Manager and loves helping clients improve their plumbing experience. Plumbing might be often overlooked but it is never under used. :)

http://www.larsonbinkley.com/