Recognizing a need in the lighting industry to forum together and discuss subjects & issues in our industry, the Get A Grip On Lighting Podcast was born. Get A Grip brings on industry experts to talk about real issues and focused on that subject matter. If there’s something to be said on the subject, Get A Grip will go there. Get A Grip On Lighting Podcasts are hosted by Michael Colligan and Greg Ehrich, who have over 30 years of combined experience in the lighting industry. Michael Colligan is an entrepreneur and inventor. He’s a subject matter expert in commercial and industrial lighting supply, lighting retrofits, and finding recycling streams for hard-to-recycle waste. Greg Ehrich, LC is the former President of the National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors (NAILD) and owner of a progressive lighting distributorship.
Keeping this one short and sweet this week. Michael and Greg share stories about selling while under quarantine orders. It’s a surprisingly good time to upgrade systems or relamp a facility. Get on the phone and let people know you’re essential and that you can keep the lights on, nevermind any presumptions.
Light Efficient Design's CEO Tim Taylor is our guest today. He talks about starting his company, his current supply chain issues, and his ideas about lobbying the US Congress for lighting infrastructure projects as a form of economic stimulus.
Sociobioligist, futurist, and author of The Watchman's Rattle and On The Verge, Rebecca Costa is here to help us take a big step back to view the pandemic's effects on not just our jobs, but society. She and Michael delve into questions of leadership, confidence and shared morals as we get through this crisis and prepare for the next.
38 years ago, Steve Byrne started working in the warehouse of American Light. After a name change and a few promotions he’s the COO of Facility Solutions Group. He invited us to his offices to share his experiences and insights into the industry. He’s seen a number of disruptions and new learning curves emerge but believes we may be seeing a reconstruction of the distribution channel that puts partnerships ahead of brand name recognition. We also talked about the gaps between experts and consume...
Jon Sayah came prepared for this one. We spoke about the reduction in the scope of short-term planning, the new shift schedules at Saylite's production facilities, and boxing metaphors.
Mark Verheyen; President of Panasonic Lighting Americas, President and CEO of Universal Lighting Technologies, as well as President and CEO of Douglas Lighting Controls is our guest for this installment of our leadership under Covid-19 pandemic to discuss his particular circumstance of manufacturing in Mexico with a mix of international components and working to keep staff safe.
Jonathan Palmersten, CEO of Gripple shares his experiences in local manufacturing, revenue loss in an employee-owned company, and hanging plexiglass barriers for food service and grocery staff.
Peter Brown joins in on a roundtable discussion of best, worst and likely short-term scenarios as governmental response to this pandemic escalate.
Frank Guastella, Director of Operations at Revco Lighting invited us into his showroom to talk about working with residential clients. He gets an interesting mix of homeowners and contractors walking through his showroom every day. And what we learned is that while his target market is different from our commercial clients, he’s still dealing with the same questions of rebates, purpose-built fixtures, and keeping staff trained and aware of legacy light sources.
Margaret Wong, Founder and CEO of McWong International has more experience working with Chinese manufacturers than anyone else, this series wouldn’t be complete without her take on this situation. She shares her insights into the current state of the supply chain and how this might change the IoT.
Ira Greenberg, CEO of Keystone Technologies joins our series of industry leaders as they respond to the corona virus outbreak and its effects on manufacturing and distribution. Beyond his work with Keystone's Virus Task Force he shares his thoughts on corporate bailouts and the strengths of family-owned businesses. Brought to you by The National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors: visit https://NAILD.org
This series of special releases is about profiling the leadership that is emerging in the face of this pandemic. In this episode the King of lighting and CEO of TCP, Ellis Yan rejoins us to share his experiences and thoughts from when it began to affect his business at the end of January through to today. Brought to you by The National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors: visit NAILD.org
A Special Release from Get a Grip on Lighting, we'll be sharing our thoughts on how COVID-19 is affecting our industry as the situation develops. Today, we grabbed Fulham's Antony Corrie for his perspective on working in the current situation. Brought to you by The National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors: visit NAILD.org
A Special Release from Get a Grip on Lighting, we'll be sharing our thoughts on how COVID-19 is affecting our industry as the situation develops. Today, we're talking about where lighting distributors fit into the 'essential services' label.
Sunset Lighting has been in the business for thirty years. And it’s current VP of operations and this week’s guest, Kyle Landig has been working there since he was in high school. Our friendly banter passes through working specifically in retail spaces - building a business to be a right fit for the client, staffing at all hours, working with people who care more about color quality than anything else, the retailer’s version of the IoT, and on-site challenges. Beyond that Michael and Kyle riff a...
When is a clock not a clock? When it’s acting as an analog display for network time. Mark Higgason of Encompass AV is on the show to discuss how changes in Power over Ethernet regulation is opening up more applications in this section of the Internet of Things. We speak with him about scalability, how businesses are adopting PoE applications, the granularity of control available for these systems, as well as how the industry’s excitement for new technologies always exceeds our knowledge. We do l...
A rare four person episode this week as we are joined by Sanjeev Thakkar and Steve Holman of Xeleum, an Eiko Company. We discuss their XiFi protocol, the functions it offers, and how interoperable their products are with other systems. After that we step back into talking about the previous booms in controls, moving beyond controls as a venue energy savings, and the heart of the Internet of Things. We also talk about whether or not it might be time for a standards body for cybersecurity and gett...
Our excursion into augmented reality and biophilic design with Cree Lighting’s Kory Liszt. He’s an inventor and the designer of the Cadient luminaire, because we can’t get this piece of hardware out of our heads. Our conversation with Kory starts with bringing bits of the outdoors in to make people feel better, using light as a dynamic element in how you experience a room. We do get into the specifics of the Cadient, including positioning, follow the sun mode versus the other customizations you ...
This week we’re taking circadian research from the conference hall to the order desk with Cree Lighting’s Shirley Coyle. We chat about WELL building standards, better ways to light interiors, preferences getting in the way of doing people good, and moving past efficiency concerns. The real impetus for this conversation was CREE’s Cadient fixture, it’s a dynamic skylight alternative that replicates a day cycle - setting aise how we might be tricking people with it, we discuss building up consensu...
This week we sit down with Brian Brandes, Senior VP of Product Development at Satco and this episode really is about the nuts and bolts of his job. We talk about end-to-end projects, market research, the creation of Nuvo, fashion in luminaires, the long-term future of legacy and poetry. In an industry where LED continues to find new ways to be a disruptor, the only real solution is to do the right thing.
CBC Lighting’s Abraham Schnitzler visited Michael in-studio to talk about some good old fashioned lighting distribution. We get into the legacy marketplace, driver availability, California standards, trade wars, and municipal retrofits. Abraham, Greg, and Michael swap stories about condo applications, the detective work that goes into quoting, customer service, and the value of business associations and old friends.
Wishing a warm welcome back and a heartfelt congratulations to Spencer and John; the first for returning to the show as guests, the second for gaining ownership of Pacific Lamp and Supply. In this chat we dig into how job title changes aren’t really changing their responsibilities or relationship with each other. After that we get into changing times, growing into online sales interactions and keeping up the human-to-human facets of business-to-business operations. Our chat get into rising acqui...
This time around we have a quick bonus episode with Randy Reid, editor of The Edison Report and executive director of The National Lighting Bureau to discuss the upcoming NAILD Convention’s recently announced itinerary, the first ever Tesla Awards, and the NLB’s Trusted Warranty program.
J Marshall Hunt is a man with a plan plan to reach contractors by being better than the ‘big guys.’ But in order to prove that fact, he has to be on their radar. J explains a few of his secrets in segmented marketing and narrowly targeted web campaigns, plus his youtube series Watt’s New with J. The conversation also spends a lot of time on the corporate culture he’s built on the power of gratitude, delegation with elevation, watching out for floaters and what it means to stay in your LANE....
After a tour of Satco’s warehouse we have concluded that they have everything. No really, everything a lighting dork could ask for is one of their many shelves. Beyond offering a tour, Bill Gildin did join us for a recording session to talk about the history of the company, how their share of the legacy support market has grown even as demand has fallen and how that support has become a value add for their buyers. The conversation also gets into some other aspects of the industry; shifting tarif...
Christopher Preston is an environmental philosopher and author, we found him when an excerpt from his book The Synthetic Age about how animals are evolving to use the growing levels of electric light present at night, we had to get him on the show. We get into human scale versus geological scale problem, the case of interference in natural selection, the varying weights of obligation to do better to the planet across humanity, and failure of awareness-building. We also talk about getting involve...
Margaret Wong got started in the business 36 years ago with a single extension cord. She got that Chinese-made cord listed by UL, a first in the field, and the rest is history. This episode features discussions of Hong Kong then and now, doing missionary work for capitalism, worker culture in China, and a potential paradigm shift global economics. We also delve into McWong’s future, advocating for Bluetooth mesh, lighting’s ubiquity as the driver for the IoT, and selling people on smart spaces. ...
From the floor of Horticann in Denver, we met up with Rebate Guru, Juan Carlos Blacker to talk about lighting in horticulture space. The space is very different from the rest of the field because light isn’t a tool for sight it’s a means of production; which makes it simple to tackle - sell bulbs that generate the most crop. We also get into how indoor growing facilities are created, their particular service issues, boom and bust cycles particular to lighting grow-ops and where the future of ind...
The showroom at City Lights in San Francisco has changed a fair bit over the last decade - the shelf space for replacement bulbs has steadily shrunk, while the number of fixtures on display has grown by leaps and bounds. There’s a lot of tradeoffs between purpose-built LED luminaires and something more modular. Michael, Greg, and our guests this episode get into the tradeoffs between treating lighting like an appliance going into the future. They also learn about the ever shrinking number of non...
2019 was a great year for us. We have learned so much and met so many interesting people from all corners of our industry. We’re just going to take a few minutes to reflect on all that. Thank you for watching, listening, leaving comments, writing emails, and telling other people about all this. There’s still a pair of short episodes ready for 2019, but we’ve got big things coming in 2020 (name pending), so look forward to it.
