Works with Soraa is a program that will thrive with partnership and collaboration from lighting manufacturers and distributors within the industry. Littman Bros has promoted one of Soraa's launch partners Tech Lighting for over 20 years. Most recently Littman advocates their incorporation of LED into their design of contemporary pendants and other fixtures.

Soraa was founded in 2008 by a team of pioneering professors, it is the world’s leading developer of novel LED bulbs that are built from pure gallium nitride substrates, solid-state lighting technology; according to soraa.com, and the company’s lamps are known to have “superior color rendering and beam characteristics compared to lamps using LEDs created from non-native substrates.”

In a press release from Soraa, it was said that the new Works with Soraa fixture program was created to encourage strong alliances between Soraa and fixture manufacturers, “so fixture and lamp combinations can be rapidly validated for mechanical, thermal and electrical compatibility.” This will hopefully resolve the sometimes opposing relationship between LED lamps and fixtures designed for traditional light sources – incandescent, halogen or fluorescent.

Eric Kim, CEO of Soraa said that this fixture validation program was designed to enable customer-ready fixture-lamp solutions for the LED market and that it is truly a valuable program that will have positive results.

“The Works with Soraa program with benefit all stakeholders in the lighting industry – lighting designers, architects, contractors, installers and end users – by providing certainty about fixture and LED lamp compatibility,” Kim said. “Furthermore, this program will enable fixture manufacturers to quickly offer a world-class LED solution, while focusing on what they do best – building beautiful fixtures.”

Tech Lighting, one of the lighting manufacturers that is partnering with Soraa for this program, is a company that has already committed to the environment through product designs with low-voltage systems as well as integrating LED technology and other efficient lamp sources into their products. Joshua Weiss, president of Tech Lighting, said Tech Lighting is thrilled to work with Soraa on such a favorable program.

“For too long, many in our industry have used the word LED ‘replacement’ lamp far too loosely,” Weiss said. “We are excited to partner with Soraa because we can say with confidence that their MR16 lamps are true replacements both in output and quality of light.”

It seems as though all of Soraa’s partners for the Works with Soraa program are eager to see this program thrive – both Michael Thornton, VP of Marketing at Focal Point, and John Baldasti, CEO of Hevi Lite, Inc., have expressed their anticipation for lamps with validated combinations.

“Focal Point is excited to work with Soraa as they are the first LED lamp supplier that is taking a proactive approach to ensuring compatibility between lamp and luminaire,” Thornton said.

According to soraa.com, solving the issues with LED lamp and fixture compatibility is number one for Soraa and everyone involved; many hope to see more manufacturers to join the program. Some advantages of this program will be:

•Faster time-to-market
•Wider customer choice and greater design flexibility
•Lower cost

Companies and manufacturers that sign up for the program will receive testing kits as well as collateral and technical support from Soraa to test the MR16 lamps with their fixtures. After this process, “validated fixtures will be listed on Soraa’s website, cross-referenced with the lamps with which the fixtures were tested. Similarly, fixture manufacturers will list the validated fixtures in their catalogs and website, cross-referenced with the Soraa lamps tested.”