Nature of Operations	12 Months Ended
Dec. 31, 2019
Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]
Nature of Operations	NATURE OF OPERATIONS Energy Focus, Inc. engages in the design, development, manufacturing, marketing and sale of energy-efficient lighting systems and controls. We develop, market and sell high quality energy-efficient light-emitting diode (“LED”) lighting products and controls in the commercial and military maritime markets (“MMM”). Our mission is to enable our customers to run their facilities and offices with greater energy efficiency, productivity, and wellness through advanced LED retrofit solutions. Our goal is to be the retrofit technology and market leader for the most demanding applications where performance, quality and health are considered paramount. We specialize in LED lighting retrofit by replacing fluorescent, high-intensity discharge (“HID”) lighting and other types of lamps in institutional buildings for primarily indoor lighting applications with our innovative, high-quality commercial and military tubular LED (“TLED”) and other LED products and controls. The LED lighting industry has changed dramatically over the past several years due to increasing commoditization, competition and price erosion. We have been experiencing these industry forces in both our military business since 2016 and in our commercial segment, where we once commanded significant price premiums for our flicker-free TLEDs with primarily 10-year warranties. Since April 2019, we have focused on redesigning our products for lower costs and consolidating our supply chain for stronger purchasing power where appropriate in order to price our products more competitively. Despite these efforts, the pricing of our legacy products remains at a premium to the competitive range and we expect aggressive pricing actions and commoditization to continue to be a headwind until our more differentiated new products ramp in volume. These trends are not unique to Energy Focus as evidenced by the increasing number of industry peers facing challenges, exiting LED lighting, selling assets and even going out of business. In addition to continuous, scheduled cost reductions, our strategy to combat these trends it to move up the value chain, with more innovative and differentiated products and solutions that offer greater, distinct value to our customers. Two specific examples of these more innovated and differentiated products we have recently developed include the RedCap™, our emergency backup battery integrated TLED, and EnFocus™, our new dimmable/tunable lighting and control platform that we are launching in 2020. We do believe our revamped go-to-market strategy that focuses more on direct-sales and listens to the voice of the customer has led to better and more impactful product development efforts and will eventually translate into larger addressable market and greater sales growth for us. Since April 2019 we experienced significant change at the Company. Prior to James Tu returning as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at the beginning of April 2019, the Company had experienced significant sales declines, operating losses and increases in its inventory. Immediately upon Mr. Tu returning to the Company, significant additional restructuring efforts were undertaken. The Company has since then replaced the entire senior management team, significantly reduced non-critical expenses, minimized the amount of inventory the company was purchasing, dramatically changed the composition of our board of directors, as well as adding very selectively to the executive team by hiring Tod Nestor as President and Chief Financial Officer at the beginning of July. The cost savings efforts undertaken included the Company implementing phased actions to reduce costs to minimize cash usage. Our initial actions included the elimination of certain positions, restructuring of the sales organization and incentive plan, flattening of the senior management team, additional operational streamlining, management compensation reductions, and outsourcing of certain functions including certain elements of supply chain and marketing. In connection with these actions, we recorded severance and related benefits charges of $0.1 million during the three months ended March 31, 2019 and $0.1 million during the second quarter of 2019. These additional restructuring charges primarily related to severance and related benefits charges as a result of eliminating three positions during the first quarter of 2019 and nine positions during the second quarter of 2019, as well as costs associated with closing our offices in San Jose, California and Taipei, Taiwan in the second quarter of 2019. With quarterly sales for the Company leveling off at its low point in the third quarter of 2019 at $2.9 million, we began to see the impact for our relaunch efforts and restructuring of our sales organization in the fourth quarter achieving sales of $3.5 million, or a quarter-over-quarter growth rate of 21.1%. In addition, losses were mitigated through the better cost management and a sharp focus on better managing pricing and inventory decisions for the last half of 2019. The restructuring initiative implemented in the first quarter of 2017 included a new management team, an organizational consolidation of management functions and a hybrid sales model, combining our existing historical direct sales model with sales agencies to expand our market presence throughout the United States. We closed our New York, New York, Arlington, Virginia and Rochester, Minnesota offices, reduced full-time equivalent headcount by 51% and significantly decreased operating expenses from 2016 levels (a net reduction of $8.4 million, which includes $1.8 million in offsetting restructuring and impairment charges). As of December 31, 2017, we expanded our sales coverage to the entire United States through six geographic regions and at the time had 50 sales agencies, each of which had, on average, 10 agents representing Energy Focus products. During 2017, we also implemented a strategic sales initiative to sell certain excess inventory that had previously been written-down, as required by U.S. GAAP. This initiative resulted in a net reduction of our excess inventory reserves of $1.4 million in 2017. In 2018, we made significant strides in expanding and diversifying our new product portfolio. We introduced six new product families, including our commercial fixture family, our double-ended ballast bypass T8 and T5 high-output TLEDs, our Navy retrofit kit, the Invisitube ultra-low EMI TLED and our dimmable industrial downlight. Our new products, including the RedCap™ emergency battery backup tube, introduced in the fourth quarter of 2017, have gained traction, with sales of new products introduced in the past two years growing from less than one percent of total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2017 to 17% in the fourth quarter of 2018, the highest new product revenue in the last two years. Our legacy luminaire product line, including our floods, waterline security lights, globes and berth lights, grew by over 90% from 2017 to 2018 and we saw some return of our military Intellitube^®sales as we achieved more competitive pricing through our cost reductions.

NATURE OF OPERATIONS

Energy Focus, Inc. engages in the design, development, manufacturing, marketing and sale of energy-efficient lighting systems and controls. We develop, market and sell high quality energy-efficient light-emitting diode (“LED”) lighting products and controls in the commercial and military maritime markets (“MMM”). Our mission is to enable our customers to run their facilities and offices with greater energy efficiency, productivity, and wellness through advanced LED retrofit solutions. Our goal is to be the retrofit technology and market leader for the most demanding applications where performance, quality and health are considered paramount. We specialize in LED lighting retrofit by replacing fluorescent, high-intensity discharge (“HID”) lighting and other types of lamps in institutional buildings for primarily indoor lighting applications with our innovative, high-quality commercial and military tubular LED (“TLED”) and other LED products and controls.

The LED lighting industry has changed dramatically over the past several years due to increasing commoditization, competition and price erosion. We have been experiencing these industry forces in both our military business since 2016 and in our commercial segment, where we once commanded significant price premiums for our flicker-free TLEDs with primarily 10-year warranties. Since April 2019, we have focused on redesigning our products for lower costs and consolidating our supply chain for stronger purchasing power where appropriate in order to price our products more competitively. Despite these efforts, the pricing of our legacy products remains at a premium to the competitive range and we expect aggressive pricing actions and commoditization to continue to be a headwind until our more differentiated new products ramp in volume. These trends are not unique to Energy Focus as evidenced by the increasing number of industry peers facing challenges, exiting LED lighting, selling assets and even going out of business. In addition to continuous, scheduled cost reductions, our strategy to combat these trends it to move up the value chain, with more innovative and differentiated products and solutions that offer greater, distinct value to our customers. Two specific examples of these more innovated and differentiated products we have recently developed include the RedCap™, our emergency backup battery integrated TLED, and EnFocus™, our new dimmable/tunable lighting and control platform that we are launching in 2020. We do believe our revamped go-to-market strategy that focuses more on direct-sales and listens to the voice of the customer has led to better and more impactful product development efforts and will eventually translate into larger addressable market and greater sales growth for us.

Since April 2019 we experienced significant change at the Company. Prior to James Tu returning as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at the beginning of April 2019, the Company had experienced significant sales declines, operating losses and increases in its inventory. Immediately upon Mr. Tu returning to the Company, significant additional restructuring efforts were undertaken. The Company has since then replaced the entire senior management team, significantly reduced non-critical expenses, minimized the amount of inventory the company was purchasing, dramatically changed the composition of our board of directors, as well as adding very selectively to the executive team by hiring Tod Nestor as President and Chief Financial Officer at the beginning of July. The cost savings efforts undertaken included the Company implementing phased actions to reduce costs to minimize cash usage. Our initial actions included the elimination of certain positions, restructuring of the sales organization and incentive plan, flattening of the senior management team, additional operational streamlining, management compensation reductions, and outsourcing of certain functions including certain elements of supply chain and marketing. In connection with these actions, we recorded severance and related benefits charges of $0.1 million during the three months ended March 31, 2019 and $0.1 million during the second quarter of 2019. These additional restructuring charges primarily related to severance and related benefits charges as a result of eliminating three positions during the first quarter of 2019 and nine positions during the second quarter of 2019, as well as costs associated with closing our offices in San Jose, California and Taipei, Taiwan in the second quarter of 2019. With quarterly sales for the Company leveling off at its low point in the third quarter of 2019 at $2.9 million, we began to see the impact for our relaunch efforts and restructuring of our sales organization in the fourth quarter achieving sales of $3.5 million, or a quarter-over-quarter growth rate of 21.1%. In addition, losses were mitigated through the better cost management and a sharp focus on better managing pricing and inventory decisions for the last half of 2019.

The restructuring initiative implemented in the first quarter of 2017 included a new management team, an organizational consolidation of management functions and a hybrid sales model, combining our existing historical direct sales model with sales agencies to expand our market presence throughout the United States. We closed our New York, New York, Arlington, Virginia and Rochester, Minnesota offices, reduced full-time equivalent headcount by 51% and significantly decreased operating expenses from 2016 levels (a net reduction of $8.4 million, which includes $1.8 million in offsetting restructuring and impairment charges). As of December 31, 2017, we expanded our sales coverage to the entire United States through six geographic regions and at the time had 50 sales agencies, each of which had, on average, 10 agents representing Energy Focus products. During 2017, we also implemented a strategic sales initiative to sell certain excess inventory that had previously been written-down, as required by U.S. GAAP. This initiative resulted in a net reduction of our excess inventory reserves of $1.4 million in 2017.

In 2018, we made significant strides in expanding and diversifying our new product portfolio. We introduced six new product families, including our commercial fixture family, our double-ended ballast bypass T8 and T5 high-output TLEDs, our Navy retrofit kit, the Invisitube ultra-low EMI TLED and our dimmable industrial downlight. Our new products, including the RedCap™ emergency battery backup tube, introduced in the fourth quarter of 2017, have gained traction, with sales of new products introduced in the past two years growing from less than one percent of total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2017 to 17% in the fourth quarter of 2018, the highest new product revenue in the last two years. Our legacy luminaire product line, including our floods, waterline security lights, globes and berth lights, grew by over 90% from 2017 to 2018 and we saw some return of our military Intellitube^®sales as we achieved more competitive pricing through our cost reductions.