​DASCOM Americas lights up its product lines with new offerings

“Please consider the environment before printing this email.”

Does that message sound familiar? It does to Ken Bryant, marketing manager for DASCOM Americas, a computer printer company in Shenandoah Valley. Bryant makes no secret that the printing industry has plateaued, so his firm has come up with a new way to fuel growth: LED lighting. (Don’t worry, though, DASCOM Americas has no plans of bailing out on its printer products.)

“We will be focused on industrial LED lighting. Lighting for warehouses, airports, those types of things,” Bryant says of the company’s new products, dubbed Sonaray, a mix of the Spanish-word soñar (to dream) and the English word ray.

DASCOM Americas is moving from Waynesboro to Augusta County to accommodate its new business plan. The company recently purchased 9.4 acres of land for its new headquarters at Mill Place Commerce Park in Verona, where it eventually hopes to assemble LED lights and grow from 10 to 30 employees. The lights are currently manufactured in China, where DASCOM America’s parent company is located.
Aside from LED lights, DASCOM Americas also is introducing healthy lifestyle devices to its offerings, like pedometers and blood pressure and blood glucose testing products. Bryant says the company anticipates rolling out the LED lighting products by year’s end, pedometers shortly after and the testing products further down the road.   

The U.S. Department of Energy estimated in 2010 that rapid adoption of LED lighting in the U.S. during the next 20 years could bring energy savings of about $265 billion. Short for “light-emitting diodes,” LED lights use less than one-fourth the energy of incandescent bulbs and last 25 times longer, the agency says.

“It makes a lot of sense for businesses because there’s an upfront cost, but they can make their money back shortly on energy savings, and LED lights tend to last longer than regular lighting,” Bryant says of the benefits of selling LED lights.

At first DASCOM Americas plans to focus on customers in the Shenandoah Valley and move tactically from there, Bryant says.

“We will use some existing channel partners we have in printers but look to cultivate some other accounts directly ourselves or by partnering with other folks that we think have some strategic value,” Bryant says.