Collingwood lights up Wrexham FC Official Shop
Following the takeover of the club by Hollywood greats Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, the club has seen soaring interest from fans. Its reported revenue increased 155% to £26.7 million in March 2025, which meant that they needed a bigger official retail outlet.
Barlows won the electrical installation for the entire building, which includes the shop floor, offices, stock areas, and toilets.
Said Richard Hamer, Director at Barlows,
Lighting is essential in any retail environment, but especially for clothing. We needed a design and installation that enhances the experience for the fans who are passionate about their football club.
After approval for their lighting design, Collingwood supplied a wide range of LED downlights and 3 circuit track lighting for the shop floor, panel lights for the offices and anti-corrosive industrial lighting for the storerooms. They also designed and provided all the products for the emergency lighting system.
The installation includes fixed downlights that provide ambient lighting with a wide beam width of 100o plus adjustable downlights that tilt. The latter have a beam width of 60o to focus extra light in specific areas.
The company’s design supplemented this with 48V track lighting and its Aurea spotlights for display lighting. This provides flexible lighting that is simple to reposition and direct the light as retail displays change.
The spotlights swivel and tilt through 90o so users can accurately target the lighting where they need it. They have a beam width of 38o to help focus the light and a colour rendering index (CRI) of greater than 90 to provide fans with a true colour representation of the kit that they are looking at.
All the lighting is set to a colour temperature of 4000K to provide a white light to aid visual concentration.
Back office and emergency lighting
Collingwood also provided lighting for the essential behind the scenes areas that a retail outlet needs. The office areas use its Solis panel lights that have a low glare UGR of less than 16 and the stock areas have anti-corrosive durable Caiman fittings.
Emergency lighting is also essential in a busy retail environment to ensure that people can evacuate the premises safely, especially if there is a mains power failure. The company’s design and products provide maintained exit signs that are always on. Barlows also used Collingwood's emergency lighting conversion pack to convert some of its mains lighting to emergency lighting for additional illumination if there is a blackout.
The design and installation took place within a tight six-week deadline so that the new store could open before Wrexham FC launched their new shirt for fans. Working with the wholesalers, Collingwood scheduled all their deliveries to meet Barlows’ installation timeline and the lighting design clearly labelled where to install the fittings to avoid any confusion.
Most of the lights supplied feature Collingwood's patented quick fit connectors so that at second fix the fitting simply plugs into place.
Says Hamer:
Collingwood Lighting ensured that we had a well-designed retail lighting installation completed in time for the club’s launch and sale of their new shirt. The lighting ensures that the fans enjoy their shopping experience and staff can work in all areas comfortably.
