Students start dorm lighting accessories company

After realizing how harsh and uncomfortable fluorescent lighting in dorm rooms can be, Iovine and Young Academy freshmen Nina Cragg, Jesse Walk, Andy Wood and Hana Morrison decided there was need for change.

They took advantage of Glo Up, a company  originally created as a yearlong project for their “Disruptive Innovation” class, which requires groups of students to come up with a product and sell 100 units of it. The four decided they wanted to focus on making dorm rooms more inviting and comfortable.

Wood was inspired to undertake the project because of his suitemate, who majors in lighting design, after watching him experiment with colored theater lighting gels in their room.

“I told [my teammates] about [the lighting gels], and they thought that was a really cool opportunity to retrofit the really awful lighting fixtures in dorm rooms on campus in an easy, fast, affordable way,” Wood said.

Glo Up currently sells lighting gels for $15 each in BubbleGum Pink and Busta Blue, which he describes as fun party-style colors, and Chaotic Neutral, a simple yellow shade that neutralizes the harshness of the lighting. Each lighting gel is installed by attaching four magnets on the corner of the overhead lights and can be layered to create different lighting effects, Cragg said.

Cragg said the inspiration behind the company is that lighting in most dorm rooms is aggressive to the point that most students don’t want to use it. According to The New York Times, fluorescent lighting emits blue light, which can trigger migraines and disrupt circadian rhythms.

“We hope that students can be more comfortable in their dorm rooms because it’s their home away from home,” Morrison said. “Especially for freshmen, it’s where you spend a lot of your time, and it’s where you want to be most comfortable.”

The company is still awaiting official approval from USC Housing to proceed with installation in students’ rooms, but the team said its product is nonflammable and safe.

“We are purchasing [our product] from a cinematic lighting gel recycler, and they buy these from different movies,” Cragg said. “Normal movie lighting gets super hot, and we figured that something meant for that would be [appropriate].”

Professor Steve Barth, who teaches the class, invested $120 in Glo Up to help the team get started. The money allowed them to buy enough material for 25 products. Last Sunday, the team delivered eight pre-orders in person across the South, Birnkrant and New North residential colleges.

“[We’re helping] people install them, so we can get an understanding of how intuitive the process is for people and if we need to change things based off that,” Cragg said.

Currently, the team is generating revenue through door-to-door sales and establishing its brand by word-of-mouth. However, it also has an online presence on Instagram and its own website.

The company hopes to further expand by adding more colors and developing discounted packs and new shapes and selling to office spaces.

“We want to expand our business to have a wider range of colors, to have more inventory at a time and sell at the beginning of next semester to incoming freshmen and to expand to other dorms,” Cragg said.