O.T.: Wal-Mart Fights for CFL Bulbs

Sometimes the business world fascinates me. After watching a Mythbusters [JessePedia] episode recently where they compared the power used by various light bulbs, I had noticed a 4-foot "end cap" display at our local Wal-Mart promoting compact fluorescent light bulbs. (Wal-Mart also fascinates me a bit, as I worked there for several years during high school and college).

I read an interesting article in the New York Times today about how Wal-Mart is leading the charge to convert America from incandescent to fluorescent light bulbs. It seems that in 1979, Philips introduced the first florescent bulb that fit into a standard light socket. Since the energy crisis of that era faded, the bulbs have failed to "spark" an interest with the American public, mainly because they give off odd or inconsistent light, are odd looking, sometimes don't fit in places that an incandescent bulb would, and are eight times as expensive. An article from FastCompany says that those problems (except the price) have been solved.

THE COMPACT FLUORESCENT (CFL) BULB

What consumers don't know is the positive benefits on their long-term power bill and the environment in general, Wal-Mart says. The interesting part is that Wal-Mart is trying to move the market towards fluorescents, despite the caution from major light bulb manufacturers such as GE. Through a number of key marketing techniques envisioned at a "light bulb summit" in October (and also a visit to Mount Washington [JessePedia] to talk to environmentalists), including the "end cap" display that I saw, they have doubled their sales (year-to-year) to nearly 4 million in August.

According to the NYT article, Wal-Mart is in talks with the likes of Google and Yahoo for promotion of the CFL concept, and even more out-of-the-box marketing techniques, such as partnerships with their competitors (Home Depot was quoted as saying "Uhhhhhh... no.")

They want to sell 100,000,000 CFL bulbs per year by 2008 (which, because of their marketing power, would increase the yearly sales of the entire product by 50% and save Americans $3,000,000,000 in electricity costs.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the light which is output from fluorescent bulbs. But I'm also sick of changing the same light bulbs (you know who you are, foyer light and hall light) once a month. Just not having to disassemble that large fixtures in our house every 30 days might be enough for me to switch.