https://inside.lighting/news/25-10/feit-quietly-acquires-cree-lightings-residential-portfolio

Cree, the name, means absolute ZERO now. Avoiding Cree from now on...

Hmm, I didn't know Cree still made household LED lamps to be honest. I remember they used to be common in Home Depot in the 2010s but I haven't seen their products for sale more recently.

CREE was a big name may be 15 years ago when they (together with Nichia at Japan) first started to make practical white LEDs. Now there is already a myriad of competing Chinese (and Korean, and Japanese) manufacturers, so no wonder Cree is starting to dissolve in some larger businesses...

Considering I haven’t seen any of their LED lamps in stores for about five years now, it makes sense.

I think the only thing that makes their name still worth something is their LED luminaire division which I believe they still own and haven’t sold it off yet, but even then, I’m not sure how much it’s worth in people’s eyes. I haven’t seen many new installs of their luminaires in recent months either.

Actually, Cree Lighting itself is in furlough... ADLT has paused operations for over a month at this point. Wawa, a local convenience store chain has been using Cree since the beginning (first BetaLED, then Cree- most notably, the Edge series of luminaires) has now switched to Acuity for sourcing needs. Instead of Cree for the canopy lights and parking lots (as was the norm), they are now using Lithonia / Acuity, specifically the D-series. I doubt they'll switch back, even if Cree resumes normal operations.....

I think I would rather trust the leadership of Alan Feit than the previous owner of the CREE business for residential lighting, ADLT.  Which by the way still owns the former CREE business for professional lighting fixtures.

ADLT is basically the parent organisation of Venture Lighting.  They became hugely successful during the 1980s-2000s thanks to their leading position in metal halide lamps, raw materials for HID used by pretty much every other major lampmaker, ballasts, fixture companies they owned).  But following the retirement of their founder and their lack of focus in migrating to LED they seem to have lost their way.  The ADLT Venture subsidiaries around the world seem to be going bankrupt or shrinking rapidly, and part of me can’t help thinking that maybe they had to sell the CREE residential business to save themselves.  So for that part of the former CREE they are maybe now better off under new owners who most definitely seem to be enjoying vastly greater success in the LED world.  We can say what we like about FEIT, but as I understand it they were not so long ago getting pretty close to be the world’s biggest LED lamp manufacturer after Ikea, and still keep growing.

@James - Thank you for the insight- I hadn't known Feit was actually run by the Feit family! Interesting statement about LED manufacturing- do they have their own plants, or do they source from the likes of K-Lite, etc? Also, Ikea makes their LEDs in-house? I know they last quite a long time, but I hadn't known Ikea was behind the entire operation themselves...

I believe that Ikea policy is to work with some trustworthy OEM(s). But as Ikea's enormous sales channel is obviously very tasty to any reasonable manufacturer, Ikea controls the production and quality very intimately, far from just sticking IKEA labels. Seems what they did with Megaman in the field of CFLs some years ago...

I don’t think Ikea ever set up its own LED lamp plants, indeed they preferred working with very reliable and trustworthy suppliers.  Some years ago when Sylvania became first to mass-produce LED GU10 in Europe they tried hard to buy from my factory in Belgium, but in the end we could not handle their massively increasing volumes.  We’d have had to build 7x more machines just for them than we needed for all other European customers combined - and the selling price would have to be so aggressive that we’d likely never earn a return on that investment.  With very mixed feelings we walked away from the offer.  In the end they persuaded an independent German company to set up production of their Ryet lamps, a really beautiful operation but it quickly failed.  Not many manufacturers survive in meeting the prices of the big retailers!

But I remember very well the incredible discussions.  Almost overnight every big LED emitter manufacturer from all around the world wanted to sell Sylvania their LEDs so as to get the vast Ikea volume., and we had almost unlimited access to their labs to make it happen.  It was during those discussions that I heard Feit was on a growth trend that may one day make them the 2nd biggest consumer of LEDs for use in retrofit lamps.

Ikea did however do its R&D and product testing for LED lamps very well in house.  A couple of times I had to go for meetings at their HQ in Ålmhult, Sweden.  Their LED lighting lab and technical staff would have put many of the world’s formerly biggest lamp companies to shame!  I think now all their lamps are made in China.  In the early days they wanted to buy from the big 3 of Leedarson, Sengled and K-Lite.  I remember seeing vast volumes being made for them at Leedarson, but then very quickly dedicated separate factories were set up only for Ikea production.  I imagine at least some are still running.  Except of course Sengled which has recently been bankrupted by the Trump tariffs and now disappeared. Those are very obviously having a profound effect on the relative profitability of some huge Chinese companies, the survivors of which are now scrambling like mad to build massive new LED lamp assembly plants in USA.

LED plants in the U.S.A.?!?! Now that's something I would love to see!

Incredible insight, James! I had no idea Sengled was such a major manufacturer, and that the Trump tariffs had put them out of business.

And, LED lamp factories in the USA!? If that's the case, maybe the tariffs are working...??

Yeah, I always thought Sengled was more of a niche brand. Lowe's used to sell their products and they were mostly smart home and more specialized lamps with features such as battery backup, speakers, cameras etc.

I remember in the 2010s there was a minor push to have LED lamps manufactured in the US...I think GE tried it, maybe Sylvania and I think the early Cree LED lamps were claimed to be assembled in the US.

I'd imagine a US assembled LED lamp would probably source most of the subassemblies and the enclosure overseas but final assembly and perhaps even the PCB assembly might be done in the US.

You won't believe how easy and accessible PCB assembly has become in the late years. Once the art for a specialized contractor, today you can *naturally* set up some pick-n-place machines and an oven in your garage at a very reasonable cost just if you wish and then run them at the industrial speed...

So moving the final assembly steps to US will make Trump happy, but won't bring significant value added to home. I dare to bet that in today's LED lamps probably 90% of know-how goes to LED chips production and phosphor chemistry and the rest is pretty dumbfold. Thermal mode of the final lamp still needs some thoughts, of course.