How to build a lighting empire, with Hudson Valley Lighting Group founder David Littman

Summary

Podcast Summary

Business of Home Podcast

Episode: How to Build a Lighting Empire, with Hudson Valley Lighting Group Founder David Littman
Host: Dennis Scully
Guest: David Littman
Date: March 30, 2026

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Overview

In this insightful episode of the Business of Home podcast, host Dennis Scully interviews David Littman, founder and CEO of Hudson Valley Lighting Group. Littman shares the story behind building his lighting empire, spanning decades and multiple brand acquisitions. The conversation delves into the transformation of the lighting industry—from manufacturing’s global migration to the business dynamics of design, innovation, and brand building. Littman also offers frank business advice and discusses his ventures into broader home categories past lighting.

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Major Discussion Points & Insights

1. Family Legacy & Early Years in Lighting

• Lighting runs deep in Littman’s family roots, beginning with his grandfather’s work at General Electric and the development of the first fluorescent bulb, continued through his father’s 50-year career in commercial lighting.
• “My grandfather was with General Electric and he was involved in the development of the fluorescent light, then the bulb which was introduced in the 1939 World's Fair for the first time, the first energy efficient light.” — David Littman [03:02]
• Littman initially planned for a career in investment banking but was persuaded by his father to take a chance on acquiring a small, failing lighting company in New York.
• “I wanted to go into investment banking... my father stopped me and said... you'd be best served being your own boss.” — David Littman [04:45]

2. Hard-Earned Lessons in Manufacturing & Business Growth

• Struggled for a decade with his first lighting company, gaining deep knowledge in hands-on manufacturing and every part of the process.
• “Although I never made a dime in that business for a decade... it taught me so much about manufacturing.” — David Littman [06:58]
• Recognized the necessity to move upmarket from low-margin products to higher-end, design-focused offerings.
• The company’s turning point: acquisition of a competitor and establishment of Hudson Valley Lighting (1995).

3. The Global Shift in Lighting Manufacturing

• Described the industry-wide move from US to overseas production: first to Taiwan, then China, now Southeast Asia.
• Loss of manufacturing skills in the US and labor dynamics are significant hurdles: “People don't really want to do it, young people don't want to do it... So it's moving to... true third world countries.” — David Littman [10:37]
• The shift out of China is accelerating, and diversification of manufacturing locations is seen as essential.

4. Strategic Growth Through Acquisitions

• Key growth strategy: acquisition of multiple brands (Troy Lighting, CSL, Corbett, Mitzi, Sonoman, Schoolhouse).
• Emphasized the importance of buying brands with a strong perspective and existing customer loyalty.
• “Branding is everything in lighting. If you have a great brand, if you have a reason for being, ... those are the reasons to own a lighting company.” — David Littman [16:57]
• Private equity in lighting: Recounted sale and repurchase of Sonoman; importance of scale and leveraging operational infrastructure for multiple brands.
• Acquisition of Schoolhouse (and its Portland-rooted “cool kid” aesthetic) and the intent to expand beyond just lighting into home categories: textiles, rugs, hardware, mirrors [22:32–24:29].

5. Business Model & Distribution Evolution

• Shift from vertical manufacturing to focus on product development, warehousing, and design.
• Multiple sales/distribution channels: retail showrooms, third party e-commerce, direct to trade. Gratitude for e-commerce driving retailers to “step up their game.”
• “The design community is definitely our largest end user. And they want typically better goods, identifiable brands, high quality, they’re not as price sensitive… That’s our strength.” — David Littman [29:58]
• Plans for a few hands-on showrooms in major markets, but no interest in becoming a national retail chain.

6. Brand Building & Dupe Culture

• Discussed the fast-paced launch of new products—up to 1,000 annually—and how that stays ahead of copycats and “dupe” culture.
• “Leaders always get recognized. People want to do business with leaders, with the innovators. And… a 90% replica… isn’t that interesting to most people.” — David Littman [40:17]
• Emphasized innovation and constant product development as the only true defense against duplication.

7. The Rise of Portables and Trends (Pooky, Rechargeables, Prints)

• Explosion of rechargeable, portable lighting as a trend, noting UK-based Pooky’s early success in prints and colors, and industry-wide move toward decorative portables.
• Category quickly becoming commoditized, but Hudson Valley Lighting remains committed to quality and brand distinctiveness rather than racing to the bottom on price [45:27–46:52].

8. Expansion Beyond Lighting

• Recent acquisitions (Schoolhouse, renewed focus on Sonoman) are springboards for growing into home goods—textiles, rugs, mirrors, hardware.
• “We want to give our design community and our retailers an opportunity to buy more from us than just lighting if they want to.” — David Littman [50:27]
• Future acquisitions in non-lighting home categories are likely, but always require a strong “reason for being.”

9. Business Wisdom & Acquisition Strategy

• Acquisition targets must have scale, strong brand, and established demand: “It’s pretty much the same amount of work to buy a small company as to buy a larger company... better to buy a business that has some scale.” — David Littman [53:15]
• Only pursue acquisitions if there’s a meaningful fit with the larger company vision.

10. Macroeconomic Headwinds & Navigating Supply Chains

• Discussed resilience through economic cycles, COVID-induced sales booms, and the realities of “stagflation.”
• Stressed the need for multi-country manufacturing approach to minimize risk (“never put all your eggs in one basket”).
• On tariffs and refunds: Pragmatic, says such policies don’t always benefit consumers, but must be managed strategically [57:25–59:05].

11. Artificial Intelligence in Lighting

• AI is used “much more on the sales and marketing side.” Not applicable yet in product development, as AI outputs still mimic existing designs [61:02–61:50].

12. Advice for Future Entrepreneurs

• Perseverance and readiness for hardship are key: “You have to be prepared to do the toughest of tough things… when things are really good… always be ready for the other shoe to drop.” — David Littman [63:32]
• Building something meaningful in lighting is a long game—“quickly, it’s almost impossible”—but innovation and reliability are always welcomed by the industry.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On family and legacy:
  “My father was also very wise… he did not want his kids in his business… It was helpful to all of us to do our own thing and Build our own lives and build our own businesses.” — David Littman [05:41]

• On business hardship:
  “I would tell you I almost gave up. But ... you fight through the hard times. So I fought, and it worked very, very well very quickly after that.” — David Littman [13:15]

• On being knocked off:
  “We just keep moving… We don't focus too much on yesterday's news. We focus on tomorrow, not yesterday.” — David Littman [39:13]

• On industry transformation:
  “…the industry is moving from China to other parts of Asia… I'd say at least 50% less than what was going on there five or seven years ago.” — David Littman [11:03]

• On expansion vision:
  “A full build out for the home is the ultimate opportunity for us. I think that’s how to think about, goes beyond lighting.” — David Littman [49:21]

• On acquisition philosophy:
  “Never buy something just to buy something because it's cheap. That's not nearly a good enough reason to make an acquisition.” — David Littman [52:48]

• On advice for entrepreneurs:
  “Run a good business, be reliable and do what you say, say what you do. And I think there's room for you.” — David Littman [65:39]

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Key Timestamps

| Time | Segment | |-----------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:02 | David’s grandfather & father’s legacy in the lighting industry | | 04:45 | Decision to join lighting business over banking | | 06:58 | Lessons learned in small manufacturing—10 years of struggle | | 08:20 | Manufacturing moves from U.S. to Asia, and the loss of skills in the U.S. | | 13:07 | Formation of Hudson Valley Lighting | | 16:57 | On what private equity looks for in lighting brands | | 19:08 | Repurchasing Sonoman after private equity | | 22:32 | Schoolhouse acquisition and plans for the brand | | 27:58 | Success factors for lighting brands, design trade focus | | 29:58 | Distribution: Showrooms, e-commerce, design community | | 34:03 | Potential for company-owned showrooms—focused, not mass expansion | | 36:11 | Capturing younger consumers: creation and launch of Mitzi | | 39:13 | Coping with dupe and knockoff culture: innovation and product turnover | | 45:27 | The rise of portables: Rechargeables, prints, color (Pooky and others) | | 49:21 | Strategic approach to non-lighting home categories | | 52:48 | Approach to M&A in current economic climate | | 56:26 | Diversification of supply chain and early exit from China | | 59:25 | Tariffs, economic volatility, passing costs, supplier relationships | | 61:02 | State of AI in lighting (sales/marketing vs. product design) | | 63:32 | Littman’s business advice for future entrepreneurs in lighting and home industries | | 65:39 | Longevity and meaning in business |

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Summary Tone & Style

David Littman is pragmatic, candid, and passionate about manufacturing, product development, and brand building. He underscores perseverance, innovation, and operational discipline as the foundations of his success, while remaining open to new categories and trends as he seeks to “control more of the home.”

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This episode is a masterclass in not just lighting but the principles of building a design-driven product company in today’s global, rapidly evolving marketplace.

Transcript

[A]

This is Business of Home.

[B]

I'm your host, Dennis Scully.

[A]

Every week I'll be speaking with leaders

[B]

and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guest this week is David Lippman, the founder and CEO of Hudson Valley Lighting Group.

[A]

David got into the lighting industry as

[B]

a young man, acquiring a small manufacturing business that was on the rocks. Across the span of four decades, he's built Empire.

[A]

Hudson Valley's portfolio now includes its namesake

[B]

brand plus csl, Troy Lighting, Corbett Mitzi, and more recently, Sonoman and Schoolhouse. I spoke with David about why the lighting business is leaving China, why the

[A]

only weapon against dupes is new product,

[B]

and why he's looking beyond lighting at the whole home.

[C]

Foreign.

[B]

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[A]

Funny enough, growing up, there was a picture of my father and his twin sister at the World's Fair in 1939. And I guess twins. I don't know. Were they a big deal in 1939? I guess they were taking all sorts of pictures of them and I was always so curious about that World's Fair. And you know, there are some, some relics of the World's Fair that still stand around New York today. But it sounds like it made a big impression on your on your grandfather at the time.

[B]

It did.

[C]

My grandfather was with General Electric and he was involved in the development of the fluorescent light, then the bulb which was introduced in the 1939 World's Fair for the first time, the first energy efficient light. And after the World Fair he realized it was a business opportunity to develop the housings around these bulbs to actually create light fixtures with Them. And so during the war, my grandfather developed a small lighting company called Lightron that my father took over in 1951, which became Lightron of Cornwall. And he built it, he sold it, he bought it back, and he sold it again. But that was over a long period of time. My father did that. That literally lasted his entire career, which was almost 50 years. He was also a lighting entrepreneur for sure, but very much in the commercial side of the business. He. He wasn't an aesthetic guy. He was more about quality of light, foot candles, engineering based solutions for commercial lighting.

[A]

Got it. Okay. And you grew up in the business,

[B]

I take it, but tried to get away. David, you can tell me.

[C]

I thought I was going to be able to get away. I was very unsuccessful at that.

[A]

You were on your way to Wall Street. You thought, I'm out of here.

[C]

Exactly. After grad school, I wanted to go into investment banking.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

And I was on my way and my father stopped me and said, david, I know you, and I just want to tell you that I think you'd be best served being your own boss. He said, I want you to look at a business that I think has potential. And I went to look this little, little, little, little lighting company called Active Specialty, which was in Newburgh, New York. And I was like, omg, what am I getting involved with here? And I really, I thought about it for about three or four weeks. Whether I was going to do banking or I was going to go into this little lighting company. Ultimately, I decided to go try it.

[A]

Well, so was he.

[B]

Was your father wise to spin it

[A]

in such a way, saying, oh, listen, I know you well enough to know you need to be your own boss. Like, did that. Was that the hook that made sense to you at the time?

[C]

It did. It did. It made a lot of sense. And I'll tell you, my father was also very wise about something else. My dad did not want his kids in his business. He said, first of all, you won't develop working with me the way you develop working on your own. And secondly, one day we will sell these companies that he's. That he built, sold and rebuilt. And he had set up, you know, great trusts for everybody, nice trust for everybody. And he said, this will be a fabulous opportunity for the family. And I want to be able to sell the business when it's time, and I don't want a child in the business that would keep me from selling the business. So that's precisely what he did. It was helpful to all of us to do our own thing and Build our own lives and build our own businesses. I have a brother and two sisters. My two sisters also are in lighting. My brother's a doctor.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

I'm telling you, it's very hard to break away. My poor daughter. I have a 14 year old. When she was about 6 months old, she started pointing at lighting on ceilings. And my wife said, oh my God.

[A]

Yeah, she's already got the bug at six months.

[C]

Yeah, not good.

[A]

So what was this little business that your dad wanted to show you?

[C]

Very important to know. It was a vertical manufacturer of lighting. Why it's important is, although I never made a dime in that business for a decade, I didn't. I mean, I literally struggled for a decade with that company. It taught me so much about manufacturing. We did our own spinning, our own stamping, our own bending, our own shearing, our own polishing, our own plating, our own painting, our own assembly, our own packaging. We did it all in that facility. So I learned a tremendous amount about manufacturing, which really set me up very well as I 10 years later realized that the opportunity in our industry was to get into much, much better merchandise and not focus on $19.95 builder chandeliers made in upstate New York that you

[A]

couldn't make a dime on. That.

[C]

No, no.

[A]

Yeah, right, okay. So. And part of me wonders was part of what you learned in that process, that yes, you needed to go higher end and have a more expensive product, but did you also reconsider controlling the manufacturing process? And did you think about, let's turn this over to someone else and what? Focus more on the design or focus more on the collaborations?

[C]

So from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, there was a huge transformation in our industry away from US Manufacturing and toward production. Initially, while I was still producing in the New York, there was a movement to Taiwan, and then after Taiwan, there was a movement to China. I actually never did business in Taiwan. I went directly to China and started doing business in China in the mid-90s. And I just started using less and less of my facility as a manufacturing facility and more and more of it for product development and warehousing, which is really where most of the industry is today. Albeit there's been a movement lately from China to other parts of Asia. Still, there's not tremendous amounts of decorative lighting being produced in the US and

[A]

is that because just economically it doesn't make sense? We don't have the abilities that Asia

[B]

has to control costs and contain all of that.

[C]

When I was in high school, we still had a very active BOCES program where some kids realized they weren't college material, but they were great with their hands. And I'm 63 years old. I graduated high school in 1980, but shortly after that, I think it kind of became a. Not such a fabulous thing to be working in factories in this country. So we lost a lot of skill. I'm hopeful that a lot of that skill will start coming back, because critical jobs that you don't have to graduate college for, but electricians, plumbing, all that. I mean, critical people are valuing those kind of positions. Again, it's hard to get people to want to work in factories anymore in the US Maybe in high tech, clean room kind of manufacturing, but in, you know, harder manufacturing, dirtier manufacturing. People don't really want to do it, young people don't want to do it. So, you know, you end up going to parts of the world where young people still want to do that kind of work because they have to. And even in China, the young people don't want to do this kind of work anymore. It's hard work. They want, you know, they want to work in tech.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

So it's moving. It's moving to, you know, true third world countries that are still not developed, and that's Southeast Asia is where a lot of manufacturing is taking place now for our industry. It's kind of a transformation away from China as we. As we speak. But there's still plenty going on in China, but I'd say at least 50% less than what was going on there five or seven years ago.

[A]

Interesting. Okay, so the move has been that dramatic?

[C]

It's been pretty significant, yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay, so I want to talk more about that, but let's come back to you and falling in love, I hope, with the. With the lighting business. Even though you struggled with this first acquisition for. For 10 years. Tell me, tell me. You said you learned a great deal from the whole process.

[C]

I did.

[A]

And what did you. What did you do with what you learned? And how did you decide you wanted to move forward?

[C]

What I learned was I wanted to start producing things that I actually enjoyed, that I liked, that I would use myself. You know, I grew up in a house. My mother was from Austria, and she was an antique collector. And so, you know, I grew up. I grew up in a historic home with nice things. I. I used to go to. I went to auctions with my parents. I grew up in a family of collectors. Even though I was a kid, I had a decent eye, so I knew the difference between beautiful and elegant and sophisticated. And high quality. And I wanted to make beautiful things. And so we started working in probably around 1993, four, eight, nine years in, we started working toward developing much better products. In 1995, I bought a company that was twice the size of mine, that was failing and added it to my business. In my facility with my team, they also made some nicer things. And we were starting to develop nicer things. It all kind of came together at the same time. It was like my aha moment. It was the one plus one equals three scenario. And I had a business three times the size that I had a year earlier. Then we just started building this business, that business in 1995 when I bought a company called LG Lighting, added it to Active Specialty. We created a new corporation called Hudson Valley Lighting.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

That was really the beginning of the beginning for me. So I took 10 years of hard, hard knocks.

[A]

You went to lighting school for 10 years?

[C]

I did. I was not a fast study. I would tell you I almost gave up.

[A]

You did?

[C]

I did. But then I took a look. You know, I'm not a quitter. You know, I'm a fighter.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

My mom and dad always taught me, you know, you fight through the hard times. So I fought, and it worked very, very well very quickly after that. So we built this business from 1995 through 2001. In 2001, I acquired Troy Lighting and CSL, which were based on the west coast. I started looking at it in the fall of 2000. It was a failed, failed business. And I looked at it. They were a vertical manufacturer as well. It kind of was deja vu for me.

[A]

Yeah. In a post traumatic stress kind of way, or no, no.

[B]

I love.

[C]

By the way, I love manufacturing.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

I really do. I love it. I love it, you know, so I really appreciate it. Most of our manufacturing that we do and factories we own are in Asia. But we feed them with great machinery and technology and support. I'm a manufacturing junkie. I appreciate what good manufacturing can accomplish, but I bought this. So I bought the company in la. I had a president out there, great guy, his name was Steve Nadell, who was with me for over 20 years, like probably 22 years or so. And we built a really nice business out there. So we built Troy, we built CSL. I bought a company in 2004 in Dallas, Texas, and moved it to California. The name of that company was Corvette Lighting. In 2005, Robert Sonoman approached me. I'd known Robert from my earlier life in lighting, and he approached me to start a business. With him based upon some of his designs. And we did that. We sold that business in 2018. And as you know, I just bought that business back about six months ago.

[B]

Yes. Which is so interesting to me that

[A]

you sold that to private equity and then bought it. Bought it back from the same private equity firm years later.

[C]

So Robert Sonoman, and our president was Sunny, her name was Sunny Park. And myself, we built this business together. Robert on the pd, product development side, engineering. Sunny in the day to day, she really drove sales, built this team out. And then I created the back office, support, finance, warehousing. And so it was. It was a really great dynamic between the three of us. We built that business from nothing and built a terrific business out of it. And in 2018, Robert approached me and said, I would like to sell the business. Robert's a bit older than me. And I said, fine. Good partners have to be good partners. So Robert and Sunny started a process to sell Sonoman, and we ended up selling it in 2018 to private equity. And, you know, they took it in a slightly different direction. You know, it was a, I think, a bold choice to go the direction. The route they went. Route. The route they wanted to go. And it didn't work for them, I think the way that they wanted it to work.

[A]

Well, so what was appealing to them

[B]

in the first place about Sonomon?

[A]

Why would a private equity firm want to buy a lighting company?

[C]

Branding is everything in lighting. If you have a great brand, if you have a reason for being, if people know why they're buying from you, if people like buying from you, those are the reasons to own a lighting company. Sonoman had all that going for it. We built a very nice, very profitable business. It had a real perspective in modern and modern and contemporary lighting. Yeah.

[A]

So it was. Right. It was a very modern brand, and it had, as you say, a clear point of view and a clear customer base. And Sonoman was a strong name, to your point. And so it had what it sounds like are all the necessary elements. And so Dunes Point Capital thought, oh, we can grow the heck out of this.

[B]

We can.

[A]

Right?

[C]

Well, I think the reason they bought it was the right reason. I think that what needed to happen. Listen, it's easy to look back on it, you know, later and say, what should have happened?

[A]

To do what. What were they. What was their idea of where they were going to take it?

[C]

I believe. I believe their idea was to really scale the business. And that business and that business could have been very scalable.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

If I were them, I would have gone out and done an add on acquisition.

[A]

So bring something, another brand on and grow it that way. Okay?

[C]

The power of multiple companies and one overhead is pretty powerful. A single company, whether you're doing $20 million or $50 million, is one thing, because you're going to have an overhead structure, right? You're going to have accounting and finance, you're going to have sales, you're going to have management, you're going to have operations, you're going to have warehousing. If you're going to have all those things, you may as well ADD on another 30 or $40 million of revenue into that same overhead structure right now. All of a sudden, you've got a much better opportunity to build a really profitable business. That's how I view it. I wasn't around during those seven years and I really wasn't in touch with the management team during those seven years.

[A]

So they went, they went off, they bought Sonoman, they did their own thing, you weren't involved. And then how does it come back to you?

[C]

We actually contacted Dunes and told them we were very interested in reacquiring Sonoman. And we worked with them and were able to come together with a deal that made sense for everybody. And we were very happy to get them back in our family.

[A]

And it seems like it's a very different product than what I typically think of Hudson Valley lighting as being or some of the other brands that you've met, mentioned. And is that part of the appeal?

[C]

So when I saw the business, it wasn't as different as you would think. It was very modern and that's what differentiated it. But we still had a tremendous amount of decorative lighting. After our ownership, it transformed much more into a, let's call it architectural, almost commercial direction. And we're going to definitely refocus it on contemporary and modern decorative design. Again, our channels of distribution. That direction is warranted for us. We have good penetration in commercial markets, but we've got even much better penetration in the decorative markets with retailers. The design, trade, contract and hospitality, those are our strongest markets. And that's where Sonoman shined and that's where we'll make Sonomon shine again.

[B]

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[A]

The lighting industry, if I understand you correctly, is one of those industries where synergy really can work and multiple brands can benefit from the infrastructure that it sounds like you've built. So you can make additional acquisitions and, you know, you're going to be able to enhance value almost immediately because of the structure you've got.

[B]

Got.

[C]

Exactly. And also give the nourishment to a business necessary without, you know, bleeding to, you know, recreate or rebuild the foundation of the business so that we can grow it properly and in a healthy fashion. So, you know, we're six months into rebuilding, Son. I think probably by the end of this year, early next year. So a year from now, you know, we'll have definitely put our signature back on Sonoman in the way we see the direction of Sonoman moving going forward. Which then, of course, brings up Schoolhouse.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

And we have the same viewpoint on Schoolhouse. We really like what Schoolhouse does for a living. We like the community it sells to. We like how they go to market. It was a very, very, very good brand. I don't really know all the details of the combination of food 52 and schoolhouse.

[A]

Have you been following that drama at all?

[C]

Not at all, actually.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

I just saw the opportunity to acquire Schoolhouse, and I thought it was a great opportunity for our companies. I love the fact that Schoolhouse has positioned themselves. It's got this kind of really cool Portland vibe to it.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Their team does color beautifully, very thoughtfully. They're also in other than lighting. Lighting is part of their business, but they're also in many other categories, certain textiles or in hardware. And they had some very good people, very talented people, and, you know, people always make a business. So we're slowly putting their team back together. Many of them were terminated from their jobs. Most all of them were terminated from their jobs. And we've been rehiring some of them. We'll probably bring some on as consultants as well and see how that goes. But it's a brand that's supposed to be alive. It's not a brand that was supposed to go away. And we have a pretty good idea what we want to do with it. I think. Similar timeframe. A year from now, you should see a new and improved Schoolhouse, one with a little more love than it's had in the last. In the last couple of years, and with a Lot of the same talent, you know, helping us continue their story, because that color story that they tell is just fabulous. Their textiles are amazing. Their rugs, I mean, I'd own their rugs. I love their rugs.

[A]

Oh, yeah. And I had had the head of the company on the show multiple times and was very impressed with that operation. And as you say, the Portland voice that it had and the kind of cool kids vibe that it gave. And I think, as it sounds like you do, I think there's a lot of opportunity to expand on that. And candidly, the Food52 acquisition never really made sense to me, but I guess they had a lot of money, and so they were expanding in all sorts of different directions. I. Food 52 was a brand I loved in a separate part way, but they seem to go off in other directions, and, well, we know what ultimately happened as a result of.

[C]

Of that. Yeah, that didn't work well. That didn't work out well. But. But, you know, it seems like there's still demand for food 52. I think both brands will live.

[A]

Absolutely. And I'm. I'm delighted. And. And, you know, America's test kitchen is a great place for food 52 to go and. And thrive, and I wish them well with that. And I don't know how Schoolhouse. I don't know who presented it to you or who brought you the deal, but it seems like it was priced to move. So good for you on that end.

[C]

Right. It was active. There was a lot of interested parties to buy that business. More than we thought, actually. But I pretty much told my team, we're going to buy this company. And so we just buried our head and said, guys, let's go. And we bought it at auction, and we were just going to keep bidding until we owned it.

[A]

And did it turn out to be more of a bidding war than you had thought originally?

[C]

Yeah, there was another bidder that pushed us further than we thought we would need to go, but I just said, keep going.

[A]

You just saw the value in it, and you said, we got to have this.

[C]

Yeah. I knew what we could do with it. And I also. It's also good for us because it gives us an opportunity. Now, once we've got that right, which will be, let's say, a year from now, it gives us an opportunity to do other acquisitions away from lighting. And I am still having a lot of fun doing this. You know, I'm at a stage in my career where I want to do the things I like to do, and I have found that I Really, I love doing acquisitions, I love product development and I just, I'm a finance guy kind of by nature. And those are the three areas that I really want to spend my time. I've got an incredibly capable team led by a very capable president. They do a great job. They do a better job at it than I can do. So you have to recognize your strengths and weaknesses.

[A]

Absolutely, absolutely. So tell me again, helping to educate me about what makes a lighting line successful. I mean you talked earlier about Sonoman. It had built a great name, it knew its voice in much the same way that I think Schoolhouse understands its voice. And if well stewarded, it will grow in that direction. And there's lots of opportunity there with a lot of the lighting brands and I think of visual comfort. I don't know if you're familiar with this company, but it seems to be a big player in the space. They seem to focus a lot on their collaborations. Thomas o', Brien, Alexa Hampton. Lots of big name designers. That seems to drive a lot of attention and focus. Is that an important element? Like what does a lighting line need

[B]

to find great success and is it a good margin business?

[A]

Can lighting be a high margin business or is it much more? You got to move that product in

[B]

volume to make it work.

[C]

So there's a lot of different ways to be successful in the lighting industry to kind of walk you through it. You've got your commodity guys and the guys that produce, let's say the everyday goods. They're large suppliers to home centers. They supply the foundational products for, for lighting showrooms, all at a price. So it's, it's more building a company around, hitting very, very important price points. So price sensitive. And that's not really how we're wired as a company, but there's, there's a real place for them in the market. Then you have a much smaller handful of companies that are good at creating value add products, you know, really high design. And as you go up the ladder from medium to medium high to high price, the air gets more and more rarefied, it gets harder. Collaborations can help in this digital world we're in, you know, because known names help draw attention. Right. We have some collaborations. I would say our collaborations are maybe they're 10% of our overall product development, 10 to 15%. The other 85, 90%, say 85% is our own. So we develop like I would say from mid price points all the way to the highest high. We focus on the design community with our product development, the design trade and how they decide to buy it, whether it be through retail lighting showrooms, third party E Commerce, in some cases, direct with the design trade, how they decide to buy it, it's really, it's really up to them. But the design community is definitely our largest end user. And they want typically better goods, identifiable brands, high quality, they're not as price sensitive with the projects they're working on. And that's really our strength. That's our strength.

[A]

And that sounds like where you wanted to go anyway yourself. Right. So. So the design community helped to sort of push everything along in that direction. I feel like it was. You don't remind me. But was it eight years, nine years ago when you first opened a big showroom in High Point? And, and that's right, yeah.

[C]

Yeah, it was nine years ago, High Point, and I think maybe the year after that. Las Vegas.

[A]

Right.

[C]

We've. We've always been in Dallas. Retail lighting showrooms were our, were our, and still are our bread and butter. We do a lot of business with our, with our retail lighting partners. They're very meaningful to us. But we also have third party E commerce. I remember, I think his name was Gary Rubin. Gary came into our showroom in Dallas in roughly 2000 and he was pitching this new idea. The name of the company was Lighting Universe and it was the first E commerce lighting website.

[A]

He's like, this is going to be big.

[C]

Exactly. And Gary had to explain to everybody what he was trying to accomplish. So many people didn't open him for a long time. I think we maybe his first year or so didn't open him. And ultimately we saw that that was definitely one of the channels, future channels of distribution for our products. And so we did start selling Lighting Universe. He built a very nice business. And then many others came into the space as well. Lamps plus came in and you know, you know, all the names that came.

[A]

Sure. And Lumens and everybody.

[C]

Right.

[A]

They all came along.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. Wayfair.

[A]

Right, right. And Wayfair, which I'm sure is a huge distribution channel for you. And in a way, are you grateful that all those players came along and so they can do the E commerce side of it and you don't have to build all of that and do all of that. Or are you thinking, oh, maybe I do need to control some of that distribution?

[C]

I think that them coming along was really good for the consumer. I think our lighting retailers stepped up their game, which ultimately was good for them. The ones that followed us on our journey of product development, and there are many, realized that it wasn't only about price all the time. So a lot of our retailers realized that, hey, we, we've got to make our SHMs nicer. We need our salespeople to be very professional and well trained and articulate. You know, we also need our, our sales groups to go in and educate them properly on a consistent basis. And I think that the lighting shows today that are healthy know how to sell much better lighting goods than they used to sell 25, 30 years ago. It's a different environment. And then, of course, the other channel I talked about was the design trade, which, you know, they, they like to do business many different ways. We just want to make our product available to the design trade in any which way that they see fit to want to buy. And they, they do it, like I said, through retail showrooms. Lots of retail showroom business go through. The designers go through retail lighting showrooms. They just, that's their comfort zone. Some go to the pro sites on an E commerce and some have storefronts of their own. And so they want to set up their own accounts. So those are the three ways in which they buy their products for their customers.

[B]

And does any part of all of

[A]

that make you feel like you need to have, beyond being in Vegas and High Point in Dallas, as we were talking about, do you feel the need to set up a bunch of your own locations around the country and build that out?

[C]

I think that possibly over the next few years, we would open up just a few, but it's more for look and feel and touch than anything else in major markets where there's a heavy population of them. We have no interest in opening up 50th, 60, 70, 80, 90th showrooms around the country. That's not in our model. I don't think it's the right fit for us. I just want, you know, where our products are not necessarily properly displayed. I want to make sure that the design trade can go in and touch it. We don't currently have any spaces. We've talked about it. We loosely talked about it. We have nothing in the works as of right now. I can't tell you that in six months we'll have our first one open. It's not like that. But it would make sense for us to open a few around the country.

[A]

Right. It does seem to your point from a marketing brand awareness perspective, physical locations help with that and giving clients the ability to touch and feel and really better understand the product.

[C]

Yes. I mean, you know, there's kind of a divide at like roughly 45 years old. If you're under 45, I don't think you even need to see it. You trust your eyes, you trust what you see online and you go for it. And you know that if it's not, if it doesn't live up to its billing, you can return it. People my age like to go see things, you know, so that's why for better goods, lots of the consumers for better goods are 45 and above.

[A]

Yes. You need to set up some shops for people of a certain age. I get it. And listen, they still have all the money, so I think you want to cater to them for a bit longer. I understand the big wealth transfer is coming, but it hasn't happened yet.

[C]

Exactly right, exactly.

[A]

So you still got to take care of the boomers for a while and I think the industry gets that. So build out some places where people can come and turn the lights on and off so they can see how it works.

[C]

No doubt.

[A]

Right. And, and listen, I mean I think schoolhouse is going to help you with the, with the younger demographic and all of that. And I think that's part of the appeal, I would imagine for you with that.

[C]

Yeah, I mean we have a, you know, Sonoman has a younger consumer. Mitzi has a younger consumer.

[A]

Right. Another brand we didn't mention, Mitzi, which has a younger and has a lot of collabs that I've seen.

[C]

It does. It's got some really fun collaborations.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And that was a, that was a startup. We started Mitzi eight or nine years ago. My management team said there's an opportunity in the market and for two years prior to that they were telling me we need to do this kind of thing. We need to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was doing. So unbeknownst to me, a few of them got together and knew that they were going to have to basically put a pitch book in front of me and they put a whole book in front of me as to the look, the feel. They didn't know the name, but they knew what they wanted to do with the product, the price point and all. And they were smart to do it that way.

[A]

Well, so how did they articulate what was missing in your, in your current lineup prior to the Mitzi? What was, what was the opportunity that they saw within the offering that, that Mitzi could represent?

[C]

So in thinking about the journey of a lighting consumer, we were not capturing the young. The first time homeowners, our price points were precluding most first time home homeowners from sinking their teeth into Our brands. And the team pitched it to me and after three hours I was sold.

[A]

They took you through the pitchbook and they convinced you to launch it. And so then what does that even take? So you greenlight the launch of a new brand. What happens next?

[C]

Well, the first thing it required was a name. And finally the president of our business, Malena Matthews, said to me, what were your grandmother's names? And I said, well, Helen and Mitzi. She said, mitzi, Mitzi, how can you not done?

[A]

What were you holding out on me with that one for?

[C]

Exactly. So after like 500 ideas of names, it ended up being my grandmother, Mitzi. So from there, launching the brand was product development, which already some of the ideas were baked into that pitchbook. We tweaked it, but we did our first launch, it was extremely well received. We did our second launch, it was even better received. And then launch after launch after launch, this brand just took off. It's been highly copied in our industry. Yes, but we just keep moving. You know, I don't, we don't, we don't focus too much on yesterday's news. We focus on, we focus on tomorrow, not yesterday.

[B]

I'm so glad that you mentioned that

[A]

because the lighting industry, I feel more than, than any other category, is knocked off so often and so quickly. And we, and we talk about the dupes and all these websites that help you just find an exact copy of the thing for less money. And, and even Tom Dixon came out and said, listen, I'm a lighting designer and I'm actually introducing a low end version of one of my lights that just gets knocked off all the time in a way to kind of combat this whole thing. But how do you think about the dupe culture that we live in today and how do you deal with it to your point, from a business standpoint, sure, you say, oh yeah, we're moving on, we've got the next design coming. But like, they knock off Mitzi pretty quickly.

[C]

With our seven brands, we launch about a thousand new products a year. And I would say that we've got a pretty high hit rate of bringing freshness into the industry. You're never the most respected business in any industry when you're a follower. Leaders always get recognized. People want to do business with leaders, people want to do business with, with the innovators and the guys who come in and, you know, make a 90% replica of an item that we launched three years ago, honestly isn't that interesting to most people. And you know, our dealers have been very loyal to Us, Our customers have been very loyal to us in general. And we just continue building through fresh development. You know, we've got a pretty unlimited product development funnel. It's big. We're. Oh, my God. Right now we're launching. We're. I'm a little woozy still. I just got back from. I just got back from a trip from Asia, and we just. I think right now we're working on fall 27. So to be working on fall 27, think about it. We launch a thousand products a year. We have about 1500 products already in the cycle being developed. So we just bombard our customers with fresh ideas all the time. And they love it. They like seeing newness. Newness is what keeps things exciting.

[A]

And designers are always saying, what's new? Show me what the latest thing is. Of course. Right. And so that helps with. That also helps. I'm sure if you've got people on the road who are trying to get in to see people, you got to have newness. You got to have new things to show. How long does it take for a product to show its success? So one of the things in the fabric industry that's so challenging is often it can take a year and a half before you can really decide, oh, is this pattern working? Is it quicker than that in the lighting industry? Or how long does it take?

[C]

Not really. So if you've got a runaway success, you learn it very quickly. You know, I would say in the first six months, if you've got a really solid a performer, you learn that in the first 18 months, if you have a. Let's say a B plus, you learn that in the first 24 to 30 months. So it's similar to any other industry. I think in home lighting is not fast fashion at all because of the nature of what it is. Other than portables, other than lamps, you have to hire an electrician. And people live with their lights for a long time. So it's something. People are thoughtful about their lighting choices before they aren't quick and random about it. People are very thoughtful about their lighting choices because they know it's going to be part of their home decor for quite a while. And so on average, though, to answer your question, I would say it's about two years.

[B]

Okay. Okay.

[A]

So that takes that long for you to really know this is a winner. And when you've got a thousand new products in development, are you simultaneously thinking, okay, we gotta get rid of a bunch of things that aren't performing in order to make room?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, our line is constantly getting larger, but we're always weeding. And of course, over time, an A item becomes a B item, a B item becomes a C item. Some A items stay at a items for 15 years though.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

You just have to follow the life cycle of every product and you have to manage them out of your inventory to the best of your ability over time. I would say the average length of a product for us is between six and seven years that it lasts in our line. An item that never gets beyond a B, let's say, and I'm just using this as a very simple methodology of abcdf. But an item that never gets better than becomes stronger than a bee will probably Last Starline about 6 years and will slowly get phased out. AI items can last very, very long time.

[B]

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[A]

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[A]

You know, it's interesting you mentioned portables and this just seems to be a category that's exploded, whether it's Pookie or all these other lines that have come along with with rechargeable. And it just seems like that's really caught on. What's your sense of that whole market?

[B]

Do you want to buy Pookie lighting? Is that one of the acquisitions you want to make?

[A]

David, feel free to break some news right here, please.

[C]

So Pookie has a unique perspective. I think they caught the print moment. They were early and they pushed it hard and they've done a great job. It's the right product at the right moment. Portables in general, rechargeables. We have a bunch of rechargeables. The rechargeable market is a good market. It's quickly getting to be a price point market. So, you know, it's commoditizing itself very quickly, which is unfortunate. But we'll just stay the course with the way we do things.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. Cause Sonomon's got a bunch of cool portable rechargeable lights and lots of restaurants in New York have Some cool sonoman lights on the tables and. Yeah.

[C]

And Hudson has some cool portables. Troy has some cool portables.

[A]

But so the price point's being pulled down. You mean it's becoming just very price

[C]

competitive at the lower end of the market. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's getting. It's very. Getting very price sensitive. But we just know who we are and we stay true to who we are and we know who our customers. We don't feel the need to go respond to the $188, $99 retail rechargeable. That's not who we are. That's not what we do.

[A]

Yeah, no, no, that makes sense. But I think your point, though, about the moment that Pookie caught this print market and the fun shades and the color and that make people sort of think about that whole category.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, you know, it's a British company and they, you know, they're pretty true to the roots of being a British brand. Brit. You know, in Britain, they love their prints.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And the US this is definitely a print moment. People are enjoying color and they. I think their timing was. Was great.

[A]

A lot of designers love the British aesthetic and they love seeing that sort of country home.

[C]

Exactly right.

[A]

And so. And you see so many parts of the market that really blew up during COVID and then post Covid. So many southern markets suddenly got to be so hot with largely that aesthetic and paint.

[C]

Painted finishes.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

And printed shades. Yeah, for sure.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

It's beautiful. I love it.

[A]

I bet you do. But it does seem like you're thinking about acquisitions more. Sonoman and Schoolhouse seem to have perhaps revved up an engine for you. And from when I talk to the mergers and acquisitions guys, seems like there's a lot of brands out there up for sale that could use some help.

[C]

There are. So we're very selective with who we would allow into our family. If there's not a real reason for being. And the reason can't be price point. We have no interest in being linked with commodity brands. It's not what we do. It's not how we think, it's not how we operate. I don't think we do it very well. It would have to be a company with a real perspective that's respected by the design trade, that has been either poorly managed or under managed or under levered, that we see an opportunity to build on. And it doesn't have to be a lighting company. Now we're entering the home space in a more significant way and we haven't really started taking a Good hard look at home companies. Yet I'm quite confident that we'll do acquisitions in that space as well. A full build out for the home is the ultimate opportunity for us. I think that's how to think about, goes beyond lighting.

[A]

So is there a category within what you're describing that seems most appealing to you or where you imagine there's opportunity?

[C]

Well, I think there's some categories that we really like that Schoolhouse is in. Love textiles, rugs, things like that. Love hardware. They're in the hardware business. They're in the mirror business. We love that business. I mean, these aren't spaces we've been in before, but there's places that we think we should be considering going.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

I can't tell you that I envision myself being a supplier of dining room tables. I don't, I don't see that. I'm not sure I see my. Our companies being vendors of bedroom sets. I don't see that. Not from what I've seen so far in that space. But then we're learning as we go here. Remember, we're letting guys entering new categories, so. No, but we're, we're pretty good studies. We learn pretty quickly. We do want, we do want to control more of the home. We want to give our design community and our retailers an opportunity to buy more from us than just lighting if they want to.

[A]

Yeah. Well, it sounds like Schoolhouse is going to, is going to teach you a great deal and you'll see where the, where the opportunities are. I certainly get the sense that we're still in a, a very challenging time for a lot of particularly lower and middle level brands to navigate. And so I know that many are still looking for a partner or an acquirer.

[C]

Yeah. And I think I probably see a deal a day.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. Most of them just don't fit the way I described to you, the way we would be thinking about an acquisition. But as we get going into the home space, more beyond lighting and into other areas of the home, we'll learn more about categories that we want to get more aggressive in trying to do acquisitions in. As long as it's fun for me. I'm 63 and as long as it's fun, and my team really keeps it fun for me, as long as it's fun for me, I'll just keep doing this. Why not? Why not just keep building? I'm a much better buyer of things than a seller of things. Much better.

[A]

Tell me, tell me more.

[C]

I like to acquire, whether it be companies, real estate, you know, it has to be the right time for me to be a seller. And right now I'm, my head is very much in acquisition mode, buying.

[B]

And does this seem to be, I

[A]

don't know what your sense is of where we are in the, in the economy, in the, in the business cycle. We, we all realize again in hindsight, that we pulled years worth of business forward during COVID with the incredible spike in sales that so many companies, and I'm assuming your own included, experienced in the COVID days. And then a bumpier ride coming out of it for the last several years, a frozen housing market, mortgage rates higher than people had gotten used to, and suddenly a war in Iran has sent rates back up, sent oil prices back up, where that dreaded word stagflation is coming back into the lexicon again. How are you thinking about this time that we're in and is it a time to be acquiring a bunch of brands, perhaps on the cheap, getting ready for whenever we might come out of this cycle?

[C]

We worry only about the things we can control. I mean, that's a reality. I mean, you know, I, I can't worry. Listen, wars. I worry, I worry for our service members in the US of course, but I don't control it. I can only worry about the things I can control. I do think that there are opportunities to buy things, but you have to buy the things that fit what you want to accomplish. You have to, you know, we have a larger notion of what we want to accomplish as a business. We know where we want to go. I would never buy something just to buy something because it's cheap. That's not nearly a good enough reason to make an acquisition. And something else I learned over my years of making acquisitions, is it pretty much the same amount of work to buy a small company is to buy a larger company. So better to buy a business that has some scale. You're going to put the same amount of work into it. Whether the company does $8 million a year in revenue or 50 or $80 million a year in revenue. It's the same amount of work to get it integrated into your system and get, get it, you know, fit it into your ecosystem. So we're not looking at small businesses anymore. You know, a couple of the companies I bought in the past were smaller. Corbett, when I bought them, was a smaller business. And, you know, it just, it's a lot of work and it's a lot of work to build them. So, you know, now we're looking, you know, Schoolhouse was a larger company. Sonoman was A larger business. Probably the next acquisition we do would. I'd want it to be larger even than the last two we've done in terms of revenue, but also in reason for being. They have to be important to the marketplace. People have to know why that company exists, how it fits into the world of whatever they do and they care about it.

[A]

So in other words, it's not a struggling brand. What you're saying is you're not, you're not looking to buy companies that are, that are down and out or have

[B]

fallen on hard times.

[A]

It sounds.

[C]

We are looking for companies that are under levered.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

You know, they don't have the right sales effort or they're struggling with supply chain. Their gross mar. You know, their margins are not in line. So they may not be making money, but they have a bunch of revenue and a reason for being. I think we're very strong with supply chain. We are in a multitude of countries today, so we've got deep reach in that sense. We were early to exit, start exiting China. We were one of the first, I believe we started producing away from China in 2002 in the Philippines. It's ultimately a factory that I bought from our vendor in 2011. But I felt all along that you needed a multi country approach to supply. You know, putting all your eggs in one basket was. It never made sense to me. So even when we lost a fortune in the first 10 years of owning that facility in the Philippines, while we were building out the infrastructure, you lost a fortune because there was no infrastructure. You know, we had to build it.

[A]

Right.

[C]

They had nothing. There was no, there was no subcontractor universe. There was no, there was no anything. So it took us a lot of time, you know, to, to get it right. But we're in, you know, we're in many countries now in Southeast Asia. We can build way beyond lighting in, in those countries. Way beyond lighting.

[A]

And have you started telling them that you want to build way beyond lighting there? Have you given everyone the heads up? Hey, listen, I got Schoolhouse. Now we're going to be start. We're going to be going in a bunch of different directions.

[C]

They gave me the heads up. They knew it before they knew I bought Schoolhouse. I think within an hour of me knowing I bought Schoolhouse.

[A]

Okay, so they knew what that meant.

[C]

They knew what that meant. Yeah, yeah, listen, we have great relationships in all of our facilities. We either own them or we own the production of them. There's only a couple of facilities that we don't either own them outright or Own the production of, you know, 85% or 90% of the factories we do business in produce only for us and. Or we own them or we've helped finance them to build just for our companies. Because these factories all have a DNA to them and, and they needed to understand our DNA and produced our DNA.

[A]

And how has the whole tariff issue impacted you? And are you going to sue for

[B]

a great big refund? Are you hoping you got a bunch

[A]

of money coming back to you?

[C]

We'll see how that plays. We'll see how all that plays out. I mean, I also own a commercial lighting company with my sister and we were talking, called usai and we were talking about that yesterday. And I don't think you're gonna have to. I'm not sure you're gonna have to sue. I think there's gonna be a refund program. And I mean, I'm probably gonna say something very unpopular, but I think that for me, I don't think the re. I don't think the refunds are necessarily in the best interest of the government. I think they, they should have, you know, if they wanna change the policy, change the policy. If they wanna. If they wanna do away with the tariffs, do away with the tariffs. But the rebates, you know, we have a big enough debt in this country. We don't need a bigger debt in this country. You know, in reality, I think that the refunds are going to go to the companies, but the companies in many cases have already passed those price increases onto the consumer.

[A]

Sure. And that is part of the big challenge in the whole thing.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Because consumers already paid that money and now the companies get the money back. Yeah.

[C]

To me, it's counterintuitive, but like I said, I can only control what I can control. These decisions are made at a much higher level than mine. But I think that it's good news for the industry that, you know, the tariffs will be a bit lower. I don't know how long they're going to last for. It seems like things move very quickly these days, so you have to be very nimble.

[A]

But I imagine that it's been challenging for you this past year of figuring all of that out. I mean, I speak to a lot of companies figuring out, what do we do with prices? We keep raising them. How do we. And you do have to make an adjustment if your factories in the Philippines or wherever you got to go and be realistic about it.

[C]

I mean, you have enough factors when you're producing overseas. Take tariffs out of the formula for a Moment you've got currency, and currency moves around an awful lot. So you've got that risk, currency risk. Now you have tariff risk. And managing all that, you know, we are. I guess we're kind of. I don't want to say numb to it, but we're used to it and we just. We know how to manage through it. And there's more profitable. There's more profitable years and less profitable years based upon what's going on. But, you know, slowly, if we have to pass it along, we try and pass some of it along. We try and eat some of it. We try and run a cleaner operation to be more efficient. We try and pass some along to our vendors as best we can. It's not easy because we need our vendors to also stay healthy so they can produce for us. Our relationships with our vendors are long and deep. If we don't own the factories, they're still our partners because most of them produce only for us. So I have the responsibility to make sure they stay healthy. They have the responsibility to make sure we stay healthy. You know, we all. We get into our war room together and figure it out.

[A]

Yeah, no, no, it makes sense. And as you say, you can't just pound the money out of your partners and say, you guys gotta pay this because that.

[C]

No, that doesn't work.

[A]

Right.

[C]

That only works so long, and then they're out of business. And then. Oh, boy.

[A]

And then what? Yeah, yeah. Is artificial intelligence showing up in the lighting industry in a meaningful way? Is it showing up at Hudson Valley Lighting in a way that you can imagine it having a big impact?

[C]

So the answer is yes, much more on the sales and marketing side. It has not found its way into our product development at all. It's funny because we've played around with it a little bit just to see where it's at, the stage it's at. And you'll put in this description of a lighting product and what you want it to look like, and it starts kicking back stuff that looks like ours,

[A]

and you go, no, we've already got that. Thanks.

[C]

That's been there, done that. Yeah. I mean, you know, so AI is grabbing its ideas from man, Right. And so, you know, it's an accumulator of ideas. And I guess if you could be descriptive enough and you know precisely what you're looking for, maybe on a development side it can be helpful. We don't use it at all for

[A]

product development, though, but for sales and marketing, it sounds like. So how's it helping you?

[C]

There's well that's when you'd have to get another, another person for our company on the call.

[A]

Okay. Okay. Well, I'd be curious about that because what I am interested in and what I see a lot more, it seems like back of house. It is, it is helping. I mean a lot of companies are telling me, yes, it turns out we can put a lot of our, of our finances in there and it tells us, hey, you've got an opportunity here, you've got an opportunity there. It does seem like people are putting CRM in there and. Right. And getting some opportun and seeing what customers are doing in a much more granular way than they were able to see before.

[C]

Yeah. And I think that's what we're doing in our company, but I'm honestly not that close to it.

[A]

No, I understand. I mean it seems like it's here in a big way and something that we'll all be talking about much more as we go forward.

[C]

I think that's right.

[A]

Yeah. Right.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, it's funny, so often people say, oh, what, what's the advice you'd give your younger self? Or what have you, what have you. So here you were, you really were 23. If I, if I recall right. I was when your father was saying, no, no, no, just come look at this, come look at this lighting brand and see what you can, can do with it. You, you learned so much in those first 10 years with, with all of that and since then have learned a great deal more. Could somebody come into this business in that way and do what you did and how would you advise them if they were thinking about doing that today?

[C]

So I think if I were going to go to a little bit broader picture of business advice, you're going to have hard times whether they're self inflicted or having nothing to do with you but having to do with just the world and the economy. And you have to be ready to fight through those hard times, as frustrating as they can be. And sometimes hard decisions have to be made. We've had over my career, I think twice we've had small layoffs in my companies. But you have to be prepared to do the toughest of tough things. You know, you have to be prepared to fight. And when things are really good and things seem like they're rolling along and things are easier, always be ready for the other shoe to drop and stay focused and don't be wasteful in your business. I find a lot of businesses get wasteful when things are rolling along. They start drinking their own juice and all of a sudden unimportant things start becoming, you know, very important. They do, you know, crazy build outs of spaces that aren't going to make a big difference in their business. Or they, you know, start making bets in categories that they don't know much about. Be wise in the way you spend money when things are really good. Because when things are really good, and that's, that's, that's some of the time, it's definitely not all the time. When things are really, really good, just know that around the corner there's another difficult time coming regarding, you know, trying to build what I built. Man, it took me a whole career, you know, and the first 10 years were torture. Very difficult. The last 30 years have been really, really good generally. But, you know, building, you know, building what we've built, I don't know how to do it quickly. I think you have to have a really unique perspective. If you have a unique perspective or a unique talent and you bring that to an industry that used to be more about sameness, I think there's more innovation going on now than there used to be. But if you have a unique perspective and talent, bring it in and the industry will welcome you. Run a good business, be reliable and do what you say, say what you do. And I think there's room for you, you know, that that's all I can say. How you build a large business, I don't know, I mean, quickly, it's almost impossible.

[A]

It's hard.

[C]

It's hard in this space. We're not in the technology and you know, we're not in the tech business. We're, you know, we're in brand building. It just takes, it takes time and consistency. You know, you have, you've got to be meaningful over a period of many, many, many years. You've got reliable, meaningful, and you know, over that time you can really build a really nice business, which it seems like you have. We've done okay.

[A]

I'm, I'm so grateful to you for making this, this time and I'm, I'm, I'm delighted to learn so much more about your, your company and about you and I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

[B]

So thank you.

[C]

It's my pleasure. Pleasure. I look forward to doing this again sometime.

[B]

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to keep up with

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

This show was produced by Fred Nicholas and edited by Michael Castaneda.

[B]

I'm Dennis Scully. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next week.