Edmonton Gemstone Lighting | Is Architectural Lighting Worth the Investment?
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Natural Light YouTube channel. I’m Trevor and I’m here interviewing, of course, the owner of Natural Light and that’s Andrew Olydam. Hey Andrew, how’s it going?
It’s going good. Yeah.
Yeah. Today here. Yeah, me too. I’m glad that you’re here.
Title of our topic today is don’t be shortsighted. Choosing quality over value brand in architectural lighting.
You wouldn’t build your dream home on a shaky foundation. So why would you light it with fixtures designed to fail? Most Edmonton homeowners focus on the upfront price tag when choosing exterior lighting. But what they don’t realize is that cheap lights can cost them thousands more in replacements, energy bills, and frustration over the next decade. Today, we’re sitting down with Andrew Olean from Natural Light to talk about why premium architectural lighting like Gemstone Lights isn’t just about looking good. It’s about making a smart investment that actually saves you money and headaches in the long run.
The Cost of Choosing Cheap Architectural Lighting
All right, Andrew. I’m just going to start with question number one that I’ve got here on my list that we prepared beforehand. Walk me through what you see when an Edmonton homeowner comes to you saying they’re thinking about just going with the cheapest lighting option from the big box store or from another provider. What’s the conversation you have with them?
Yeah, I mean, typically I just give them examples from my personal experience with customers who’ve actually gone with cheaper lighting and then actually transitioned over to Gemstone Lights. So, they end up actually buying the cheaper lighting and then end up buying our lighting afterwards. Yeah, it’s a horrible experience to be honest. You feel like you’ve been taken because you’ve had to buy something twice and as much as it might be budget lighting, it’s still not cheap. So, you’re still buying a product that is, in the thousands of dollars. And so even if you felt like initially you saved 1,000 bucks versus a premium brand, if that cost you 3,000 and ours was 4,000.
Well, now you’re looking at 7,000 because you bought one light and then got it taken down. And usually depending on the light, I sometimes still have to charge to take down, at least a small fee, to take down an existing entire system.
So, yeah, just that feeling of buying something. I think we talked about it earlier, kind of to start with, that made me think about this. It’s really easy to not look forward and you just look at pictures that have been shown and all the houses look great. No one shows horrible pictures of their lighting and their lighting might look great. At night it might look awesome and might look almost identical to the lighting that we have that I offer through Gemstone. But it’s one year, two years down the road, and I have had it that quickly. The last house I actually just finished, that was the case. I took down their old lighting and then put ours up. And yeah, it was just frustration after frustration and feeling like it doesn’t work. No one wants to come out to fix it. And that’s part of what happens when you don’t end up buying not just a premium light, but from a premium company because they’re going to cut corners in every avenue.
What You’re Really Paying for With Gemstone Lights
You’re not typically getting a premium company that’s going to install a cheap light because that premium company knows if they install a cheap light, they’re going to have to constantly service that and they’re not going to make any money.
And at the end of the day, life’s not all about making money, but I don’t think anyone likes working for nothing. So, that I think is a huge part of it. It’s very disappointing and very frustrating.
So, if you can get past that initial feeling of getting a deal and realize long term, I would say the weight of that feeling of getting a good deal isn’t as good of a feeling as the bad feeling of when two years later you’re like, “I feel like I got taken.” I think that overrides that initial good feeling. I think it should.
Yeah, I agree 100% with that.
So, now when people hear Gemstone Lights and see the premium price tag, what’s the immediate pushback you get and how do you help them understand what they’re actually paying for?
Yeah, I mean the one really nice thing, to be completely honest, and it’s part of what I got into Gemstone, and they’ve actually only got better, is their warranties and their customer support even on their end.
So, I support my customers personally if I go out to an install. Gemstone Lights, we’ve gone over this lots of times, but have a 20-year warranty on the bulbs, 10 years on the rest of the products, one year on the labor, and even with our customer service over the phone, you’re talking to an actual person in Calgary who actually was an installer. So, they know the product inside out. They’re not just someone who’s reading off a script trying to, okay, this was your issue. Now, okay, X this one off. They know what it is typically.
And then if they can’t fix it, they know that then, okay, we’re going to have to get an installer out there and then either you or they call me and I come out and fix it.
But that to me is a huge part because most lighting brands, they actually don’t even have a headquarters.
Their headquarters is there’ll be an electrician who puts the lights up that he ordered from China.
You’re not getting a hold of that company. They’re just not.
It’s a shipping container in the yard.
Yeah. Exactly.
So, you’re not getting anyone helping you on that end. And so you’re not getting much of a warranty other than what maybe the electrician gives you.
Yeah.
Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense.
So, you’ve got not only a good quality product, you’ve got a company that actually backs it up.
Yeah.
How Edmonton’s Climate Tests Permanent Outdoor Lighting
Now, let’s talk about Edmonton winters because that’s a thing.
Sure.
Right. Half the year is winter.
Specifically, we’ve got temperature swings from minus 40 to plus 30 throughout the year.
How does that extreme climate expose the difference between cheap lighting and premium architectural lighting?
Yeah. I mean, personally, I know our lights don’t fail in high temperatures. They’re technically, I don’t think, rated for minus 40, but we’ve hit that and I’ve never had any issues.
We don’t have three-week-long stretches of minus 40, so no one wants that, but at the end of the day, the warranty would still cover it.
So, it’s not like Gemstone would blame you for all of a sudden minus 40 and be like, “Well, we don’t cover it under that.”
To be honest, I haven’t had specific instances where another company’s light necessarily failed over a certain temperature.
But one of the confidences we do have is our product is actually made in Calgary. It was designed in Calgary.
So, as much as people in Edmonton might not have an affinity for Calgarians, overall we still know the weather is relatively the same.
Our product is built for our climate and with a knowledge of our climate.
So, it wouldn’t be worth us selling our product at a premium price if we had to service it every year, every winter, because it was failing every time it hit minus 20.
Yeah.
And so you just know that you have that confidence that our product is not based out of California when their winters never hit below one, I’m guessing.
I don’t know. Never below 80 degrees F.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Get your conversion table out.
So, yeah, just having that confidence that it is a locally built and produced product and so you just know it’s made for our climates.
Okay, so we’ve covered the product and the product is great and they stand behind their product, but the other side of it is the installation, right?
Installation, there’s a fee to that.
Why Installation Quality Matters as Much as the Product
So, why would somebody want to choose Natural Light Edmonton to install their Gemstone Lights as opposed to any of the other installers?
Yeah. Personally, I think it’s actually almost a personal question in my mind, whereas for some people maybe it’s not.
But I hold a personal standard for myself and for my business that I care about people and what they’re getting and how they feel about what they’re getting.
I think that’s something that has, well, I know that’s something that has very clearly been seen when I interact with my clients.
I think my reviews show it in Google from my clients.
But I truly do care how people feel about the product that they’re getting.
I want them to know and be confident that what they’re getting is a quality product that’s installed well.
And not just installed, but products do fail at times. Even the best of products fail.
And what is it going to look like for you when and if that happens?
Is it going to be a headache or is the person, which will be me, on the other side of the line actually wanting to come out to fix it?
I know that sounds almost counterproductive, that I would actually want to come out to fix your lights because you’d think, well, you wouldn’t want to come out because it’s a service which you either maybe get paid a small amount for or don’t get paid for at all.
But truthfully I want to make sure your lights are working. It’s just such a morally standard that I have. I just won’t break that standard.
And again, my clients have seen that at many times where I’ve come back. If it’s an issue that just happened to be a one-off really weird thing, I’ve come back a couple times until we figured it out.
And I won’t charge them for the multiple trips if it’s something that’s on my end that just needs to be figured out because I want their product to work.
They’ve paid for it, they want it to work, and that’s my goal.
Yeah, that really speaks to the owner of the company and the company itself.
I know you don’t own Gemstone, the company, right?
But if you did, that would be even more miraculous and amazing.
But you stand behind the work. They stand behind the product. You stand behind your workmanship, your installation of the product.
So, for me, when people are choosing who’s going to install the lighting for them, it only makes sense to me to choose somebody who’s going to do a good job.
Yeah.
You might pay a little bit more, but is it worth it to pay a little bit more today to ensure peace of mind tomorrow?
Or do you want to save a buck today and have that uncertainty?
Yeah. Yeah. And I think to clarify even what I was saying earlier, I think a big part of it too is, let’s say the difference in cost from one dealer to another is even 500 bucks, which depending on the size of the house, if it’s on a $4,000 job, $400 can seem like a lot.
But what is the tendency of that person, if there’s an issue, to come back, let’s say in two years once the technical labor warranty is off, to basically just want to charge you the maximum amount that they can?
Really there isn’t actually a limit. Gemstone doesn’t put a limit on what we can charge.
And I think at that point you feel worse having to pay more over and over and over again than you do having paid initially and then feeling like I know what I’ve paid and I’m not paying more unless it’s something that’s on their end.
There’s just something so much more satisfying to not feel like people are constantly trying to make more money off you.
My biggest thing when I do service calls, I’m not there to actually make money on my service calls.
So, if there’s ever a charge that’s unrelated to warranties and it’s something to do with a customer’s house or something like that, I’m really there to just service it and to basically have my time paid for as little as possible because my goal is to make money off of the actual install.
And from then on, you can kind of sit back and enjoy your lights and enjoy the fact that someone’s going to come and maintain them to your satisfaction.
I love it.
You know what you’re talking about reminds me of a quote from Benjamin Franklin, and I’ll read it here.
It says, “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.”
That’s a good one.
No better words have been spoken than that.
And that’s what we’re talking about today.
So, if you are looking for a quality installation of architectural lighting on your home, whether that’s with Gemstone Lights or landscape lighting, look no further than Andrew at Natural Light Edmonton.
You can visit his website at mynaturallight.com and you can visit the website and get a quote, an estimate from him to come out and light your home.
Did you have any other things you wanted to share with the audience today?
Yeah, and also, if you’re watching this, you’re on the YouTube channel, but I’ve been finding a lot of people really appreciating a lot of the different info that’s on the YouTube channel.
So, feel free to watch some of the other videos to get a better understanding of Gemstone Lights and Natural Light Edmonton and what it is that you’re getting.
Awesome. Yeah, that’s great.
That’s a good call to like, subscribe, and share with somebody you know so they can get Andrew to their place and make it look spectacular as well.