Lighting Retailer Finds New Downtown-Dieppe Location
DIEPPE – When the owners of Lite It Up by Design moved their Dieppe showroom from 714 Malenfant Boulevard to 712 Champlain Street, they left the former location as renters and reopened at their new one as landlords.
On top of purchasing the new shop, the bump in traffic for Lite It Up – up to about 54,000 cars a day passing the retailer’s front doors – cannot be beaten, says president Marcel Gaudet, who launched the business in 2008 with his brother Francis.
“We’re right on the main drag now and we’re busy, so everything is good. At the other place, we were a bit in the background, so a lot of retail didn’t know we were there. The contractors knew we were there. Now you’re going to see that we’re here,” said Gaudet.
Gaudet told Huddle the plan to move came from the lease on Lite It Up’s former home about to expire.
The move saw the square footage the light shop occupies stay the same – 5,000 square feet – which is a good fit for the business with its staff of 10, seeing steady, reliable crowds of customers since reopening post-pandemic.
“It’s been a bit busier, not a lot – just a bit more than usual,” Gaudet said.
Gaudet said Lite It Up’s niche is specialty services. It has built its place in the world of retail on consultation, helping clients find the right lighting and bulbs for their specific purposes.
The two locations in Rothesay and Dieppe offer fixtures and bulbs from more than 25 suppliers –a list that includes the likes of Hinkley, DDI, Kichler and Kuzco Lighting.
When asked if running Lite It Up’s two showrooms in Dieppe and Rothesay rack up stiff power bills for the retailer, Gaudet said most of the lights the retailer sells use LED bulbs, which prevents out-of-control utility bills.
That was not the case when Lite It Up first opened in Rothesay 16 years ago when they were using incandescent bulbs, Gaudet said.
“They were all, let’s say, 20 kilowatts. We had, like, 500 lights on the ceiling and had to have them all on,” he said.
By the time they opened in Dieppe in 2013, Lite It Up’s showrooms were mostly illuminated by power-sipping LED bulbs.
“Now, with LEDs, it’s not that big a deal, you have a lot of bulbs, but they’re only six watts a bulb,” he said.
Lite It Up also has a stake in Greater Moncton’s red-hot, aggressively growing housing market, with several commercial clients purchasing fixtures for new developments.
Lite It Up has been seeing a lot of commercial-side growth recently, Gaudet said – especially apartment buildings and residential developments.
The lighting retailer has sold fixtures that are going into prominent developments coming to the Hub City, including John Lafford’s Three Sisters, the Riverside in Shediac and many of the garden-style homes going up in the area.
Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].