End of an Era. Philips discontinues all Strand Luminaires

[Salazar]

Sorry if this is old news but I just found out about it yesterday. It's the end of an Era. Philips has discontinued all Strand Luminaires. While it is true Strand had just recently got the Coda luminaires retooled and back in production, our local distributor has been advised that production of all Strand Luminaires (such as the SL) has been discontinued. The distributor is waiting for updated catalogs for the Selecon line. A quick look at the Strand website shows all links to Stand Luminaires have been removed. Of course, the rebranded Selecon Luninaires are available as "Strand Selecon" or "Philips Selecon" :)

[paulears]

The lack of old familiar products at ABTT was a pretty good clue. It's still a bit sad to walk past a stand at a show and see nothing at all of any interest to me.

 

Maybe they should flog the tooling for everything they used to make to the Chinese and watch them make a profit!

[jonathanhill]

To be honest I am not sad to see the back of the SL and Toccata range. Shame about the Cantata F and PC though, I though that they were well built bits of kit. I wonder how much longer the Strand name will live on now then, with them losing huge ground to ETC's Ion and Eos in the console market.

 

edit: for SPaG

[boatman]

Well, now that my Minims have become collectors items, I'll just wait for the Antiques Road Show to come here and I'll make a mint. :)

[KevinE]

If Philips live up to past form, everything eventually gets rebranded Philips...remember Pye? Ekco?

[woody74]

Philips has discontinued all Strand Luminaires.

 

Is this just a UK development? The US site seems to either be woefully behind*, or the lights are still available.

 

-w

 

*just noticed that the last press release on their site was from April...

[gareth]

It was only a matter of time ... back when the last acquisition happened, all the Strand products were barely given any space at all on the re-launched website, and the bottom of each of their pages featured a very prominent link banner taking the viewer to the page listing the equivalent Selecon product. I reckon the writing was on the wall right from the word go.

 

As to how much life there is left in Strand as a whole - well, I guess that's something that we'll have to wait and see. No more Strand lanterns, and their range of lighting controls (which has been their main strength up until the demise of the 500-series) is being pretty much blown out of the water by ETC and others. I've got a Galaxy 2 and a Duet stashed away in a dark corner - 'living' proof that back in the day Strand were really driving the development of lighting consoles forward, and were at the cutting edge. Another wall/writing interface scenario on the cards, I feel. It's a real shame - in my younger days, when lighting was a schoolboy hobby, the name Rank Strand was synonymous with the British stage lighting manufacturing industry (which was pretty dominant back then). Scary to think that that was a quarter of a century ago (makes me sound like a right old git when you put it in those terms - I'm not, really!) - but evidently that's more than enough time for the driving force of stage lighting manufacturing to totally lose its way. It's a real pity to see it go this way. :)

[tfolsom]

The Philips acquistion of Selecon within the Philips Entertainment Group was bound to create some opportunitities to operate both Strand and Selecon more efficiently. The Philips Entertainment Group currently includes Vari*Lite, Strand Lighting, and Selecon.

 

However, to say the SL is completely gone would be incorrect. The SL is being built in the Dallas facility (albeit in much lower quantities), and will be replaced this fall by the new LEKO fixture, which will employ much better optics and the Philips Fast -Fit lamp. With the actual introduction of the LEKO, indeed, the SL will be phased out. Strand Lighting is still building many of its fresnels, however we will be discontinuing the Quartet F and PC range, and the Coda is clearly replaced with better product from Selecon. MOST Strand customers have been more than willing to shift their fixture needs to the Selecon products, and we have been accomodating all those requests.

 

With the acquisition of Selecon, the current thinking is NOT to release the LEKO in 230/240 volt, though this is still under discussion, as there seems to be a large interest in Asia for the new LEKO.

 

We view it as the beginning of a new ERA.

 

tfolsom

[gareth]

However, to say the SL is completely gone would be incorrect. The SL is being built in the Dallas facility (albeit in much lower quantities), and will be replaced this fall by the new LEKO fixture, which will employ much better optics and the Philips Fast -Fit lamp. With the actual introduction of the LEKO, indeed, the SL will be phased out.

Will the Leko (sorry, are we supposed to call it a LEKO? :)) be a Strand-branded product? Or a Selecon product?

 

If the SL is being phased out, what's happening in terms of support for current users of SLs? We have approximately a hundred units in our lantern stock, and I know there are lots of other venues in the UK with fairly large quantities of SLs - they're far from the most robust of lanterns, and bits break (polycarbonate friction blocks in the rotation collar, focus knobs, colour runners, and let's not even think about revisiting the old debate about the poor-quality glass reflectors breaking apart during normal use) - will we still be supported with spares? Or are we going to be stuck with an ever-increasing number of broken, obsolete lanterns for which we can't get spare parts?

 

Strand Lighting is still building many of its fresnels, however we will be discontinuing the Quartet F and PC range, and the Coda is clearly replaced with better product from Selecon.

Which Strand fresnels are still being built, then? When I go to www.strandlighting.com and navigate to the theatrical luminaires page of the product section, every single product listed is a Selecon model.

 

MOST Strand customers have been more than willing to shift their fixture needs to the Selecon products, and we have been accomodating all those requests.

Rightly so - Selecon products are very good. We have some 90-degreee and 5/15 zoom Pacifics in our venue stock, and I like them very much. There's much about them that's better than the SLs that we also have. It's not so much the loss of the Strand product portfolio that is being mourned, I don't think - it's the gradual but relentless attrition of Strand as a brand/company. But hey, I guess that's progress.

[musht]

I`m guessing LEKO is a Hoover like name to our American cousins for a profi....elipsodial , Philips has the name via Strand Century, Century`s founders being Levy and Kook, so the story I was told goes..

 

Wonder if the 110V/230V decision also means adaptions to optics, 110V filament is smaller.

 

Could be branded the Pat23 MK95 for the UK market ;-)

 

Strand as a UK company ceased to exist couple of years back mebbe a decent burial would be better, look forward to the new ERA , certainly no lack of lolly for R&D hopefully, wonder if theres anything in that captalisation...

[swampman]

This was news to me and thinking about Strand's history, product and market:

We cannot deny the optical quality and build of "most" of the company's products ( I still hace 20 year old Strand in useable hire stock). Also you knew that you could get a clean adjustable predictable beam, lead in acheiving a controllable (programmed) light level... Other manufacturer still do not acheive that... However:

The price of lanterns; the cost of aluminium custom extrusions and dies, short product runs (by modern industrial standards) the use of difficult to obtain parts (knobs, connectors etc), a "snobby" attitude at shows (NOTE not the only manufacturer to exhibit this!) did not always do the company justice and was frustrating.

 

It seems Philips has done well to go into profitable high tec market areas (medical equipment etc) diversifying and avoiding losing out by making only domestic consumer products, we shall see how things move on from here Another name in British manufacturing gone into history.

[Salazar]

Philips has discontinued all Strand Luminaires.

 

Is this just a UK development? The US site seems to either be woefully behind*, or the lights are still available.

 

-w

 

*just noticed that the last press release on their site was from April...

 

I'm the original poster and I'm in Canada so my information is Canadian. I did check the Strand website http://www.strandlighting.com before I posted and couldn't find any remaining reference to the Strand line of luminaires. Any link from the home page took me to the Philips Selecon luminaires.

[dbuckley]

It was only a matter of time

I think thats quite a precient observatin.

 

Strand (the UK company) were a horizontally integrated company; they did lanterns, and controls, and dimmers, and rigging accessories and all sorts of stuff. But they got shoved hard by specialist companies who do just one aspect of lighting. A large number of companies have sprung up that just do lighting controls. Selecon just do conventional lanterns. But each of these market segment companies do what they do really really well. Strand ended up with a diminishing slice of an increasing pie, and that can only continue for so long.

 

Had Strand management figured out they only thing they had up their sleeve was the sucessor to the 500, and done most of what Philips now appear to be doing, which is to dump just about everything else they make (and spares for historic stuff) and become a twenty person company that makes lighting controls then perhaps Strand (in name) may have been able to survive and pull off a rabbit out of a hat. But would it have worked? There's clearly some noise now that Phillips are dumping Strand lanterns, would people have then gone back to Strand to buy the one thing they could succeed with?

 

And they certainly wouldn't have been the Strand that those of us with a few years on the clock remember with fondness.

[JDLX]

Saw it coming when Phillips took over selecon. The selecon range of lanterns have been superior to the strand equivalents for some time now in my opinion so it was only a matter of time.

[David Ripley]

Strand really held the market when I first started out, in terms of lanterns and control, but gradually let things slip. I remeber using a Duet 1 - no monitor just LED's showing what was on but not the level

 

The first big shock was the contract for the National Theatre lantern stock going to CCT Silhouettes, they responded with the Cantata - eventually. Anyone else had to use Strand Pattern 764s or Tspots? Yuk!

 

Then the SL was a really pale imitation of the Source 4 and nothing happened after the 500 series desks. They did have a new desk but then it all went wrong and the Palettes came in with a bog standard US OS.

 

In the meantime ETC have galloped ahead, still selling S4's by the bucket load and actually developing the desks.

 

However Strand will still be with us for a bit yet as the lanterns (up until SL) were built to last and in some places there are still Patterns around, in fact in recently drawing up the Strand lantern range in 3D for LD Assistant I did include 23's, 123's etc as I know they're still in use.

 

Buggers to draw but strangely satisfying when done!

 

PS whatever happened to CCT?