A Richmond business is shedding new light on the way we illuminate our surroundings.
Cooledge Lighting Inc. has developed a way of manufacturing LED lights into a sheet about as thick as a dozen or so pieces of paper. And that has opened up a wealth of ideas for designers and architects who can now look at lighting as a material rather than a standalone source.
The company was formed seven years ago when another local high-tech firm, TIR Systems, was being incorporated into Dutch electronics giant Phillips, leaving a number of its employees without a job.
“It turned out there were some very good people who knew about LED lighting who were available,” said William Sims, Cooledge’s interim CEO. “And the next thing you know, a company called Cooledge was born.”
Initially, the focus was on LED development. But as advances in the global market brought their cost down significantly, the decision was to exit that category.
“It was clear that being in the device business wasn’t the way of the future,” Sims said. “But the company had the unique idea to create these flexible light sheet products that provided a source of light that was very different from the traditional fixtures that people are used to.”
“Materializing light”is the term Cooledge has given to their product philosophy.
“The way the world has thought about illuminating spaces in the past has always come from points of light,” Sims said. “The notion we have is that by having our very thin and flat lighting panels that are so flexible you can wrap them around a pole, snap together and can be cut to fit, you have the opportunity to turn a surface that is already in the room into the point of light itself — the source of illumination.”
That’s a facet the design community, Cooledge’s primary customer segment, had been wanting to attain for many years, making a ready market for the company’s products. And that has been responsible for tremendous revenue growth, which earned Cooledge second place in this year’s Technology Fast 50 companies list compiled by Deloitte, which selects firms that have demonstrated innovation, leadership and rapid revenue growth over their last four years of operations.
Deloitte pegged Cooledge’s growth at 16,966 per cent between 2012 and 2015. Exactly what that means in actual dollar terms is information the company was not willing to divulge.
“They (architects and designers) felt encumbered by the necessity of utilizing points of light for illumination. Our technology completely changes that game,” Sims said. “You can now have ceilings and walls that are providing the illumination for the space that allows a complete re-imagining of what interiors can look like.”
But don’t expect to be able to visit your local DIY supply store any time soon to pick up a sheet of Cooledge’s lights — which are manufactured in both their Richmond plant that employs around 70, and another one in Mexico — in the near future.
Sims said sales are currently limited to the architectural/commercial sectors.
“We don’t anticipate at this point that it will be available to consumers in the next few years, but we do think it has the opportunity to become ubiquitous. There are many installers around the globe,” Sims said.
With more than 70 patents for their technology, Sims said the company is well protected against challenges from imitators.
“But most importantly, we have what we believe is the most prominent brand name in this space as it relates to this whole notion of surface illumination.”
As for the recognition from Deloitte, Sims said that was a major boost.
“It’s a big deal for us,” he said. “We’ve gone from basically nothing to where we are today quite rapidly, which is something to be excited about. But more than that is our growth trajectory in raw dollar amounts. That’s going to be much more aggressive. So, our future looks very bright, no pun intended.
“We’re very bullish about where this company can be in the next handful of years.”
