Gregory Kay points to a theatrical-looking bronzed sconce embellished with swags of bronzed beads that’s hanging in his showroom. “That should cost $250,” he says. The price tag reads $312. “It’s too high,” he continues. “They don’t have the manufacturing down yet.”
Translation: That sconce could be cheaper, should be cheaper and probably will be cheaper once the manufacturer works the kinks out of the production process.
Price is a big issue with Kay. So are manufacturing and importing and other ways by which ultra-unusual, ultracontemporary lighting products come into being at Tech Lighting, Kay’s 10-year-old creation.
Most Chicagoans know Tech as that funky lighting store at the corner of Superior and Franklin Streets.
It sells alternative lighting to contemporary-minded folks: Halogen desk lamps as sleek as racing cars; large ceiling-suspended glass disks that look like flying saucers; cable lighting systems based on halogen bulbs and low-voltage exposed wires.
What most Chicagoans don’t know is that Kay and his crew of 40 have been winning national acclaim for the past five years for designing and making lighting. Lighting that looks European (technical, industrial), but isn’t as costly and is listed with Underwriters Laboratory, an independent U.S. testing agency that checks products for public safety.
Kay sells his lighting to about 100 lighting showrooms across the country and in Mexico and Canada.
From a nondescript, entirely unchic manufacturing facility on North Elston Avenue, this electrician and former lighting systems designer for discos and roller rinks, along with his staff, create and produce their own version of cutting-edge illumination.
The Tech Lighting line, as it’s called, focuses on architectural rather than decorative lighting-meaning the emphasis is on the beam of light and how it’s manipulated rather than the fixture’s appearance.
Among the products in the line: Ceiling suspended lamps; single- and multi-head spotlighting attached to a metal canopy and track lighting.
The road to success
Tech Lighting’s piece de resistance is Kable Lite, the product that landed Kay, 39, and Tech Lighting into the big leagues of lighting design and manufacturing.
Kable Lite is Tech’s trademark name for cable light, an 8-year-old German innovation that’s akin to track lighting, but is more flexible and fashionable.
In just five years, Tech Lighting established itself as one of the leading makers and sellers of cable lighting nationally.
“I’m kind of a competitor of his in a sense,” says L.A.-based Ron Rezek, which is a compliment coming from the man who is widely considered to be one of the best American lighting designers. Rezek’s lamps and fixtures are distributed by Artemide, an Italian lighting company and a powerhouse in the industry. (Rezek’s lamps are sold at several Chicago area lighting stores, including Tech Lighting.)
“He’s been a real innovator in bringing some of the European concepts into the American market-from a manufacturing and design standpoint,” continues Rezek, noting Kable in particular.
New York lighting systems designer Paul Gregory, whose firm is called Focus Lighting, adds: “They’re exciting, innovative products-new ideas and nicely made.”
Celebrity clients
Gregory has used Kable Lite in the main dining rooms of Planet Hollywood restaurants across the country.
Showroom designers for Giorgio Armani used Kable Lite in A/X Armani Exchange boutiques. It fit the “aesthetic criteria” of the company, according to a spokeswoman for the Italian fashion designer. Meaning: It’s super chic.
Chicago architect John Voosen exposed the flipside: Super celestial.
He hung Kable Lite in the chapel of St. Luke’s, a 60-year-old recently renovated Catholic church in River Forest. Following the lines of the church’s pitched ceiling, he strung the cables in the air. The lights float like a canopy of stars, creating a virtual ceiling.
“It’s most effective, let’s say on Monday night when there’s a rosary (group) meeting, and it’s dark outside,” explains Voosen. “The church is dark and these lights are on. It draws you right to the chapel area.”
Kay is not surprised his version of cable is taking off in so many different venues.
“I absolutely knew it,” he says. “I look at it as the track lighting of the 21st Century.”
That’s an idea
Cable set the world of lighting abuzz when it first broke in Europe in the mid-1980s. It was track lighting without the track, without the limitation of ceiling.
For Americans, though, it was an expensive import with limited application. Designers and architects here could not specify it for big jobs, because it wasn’t UL listed, as is the case with many foreign-made fixtures.
Kay saw the potential. He came up with his own version. He cleaned it up technically by making the design sleeker and installation easier, got the system UL listed and brought down the price.
Although Tech Lighting is not the only U.S. maker of the product, it is one of the largest and offers accessories other manufacturers don’t.
Tech sold $2.5 million of its Kable product last year, according to Kay. He expects to sell $3.5 million of it this year.
These are impressive numbers for a small manufacturer whose total sales were $3.8 million last year and whose contemporary focus isn’t exactly mainstream America.
Contemporary, architectural lighting is a small, albeit highly visible, subcategory of the great big world of lamps and lighting. As a category, it has not been a resounding success with American homeowners. As a product, cable lighting pushes the concepts of “contemporary” and “architectural” to their extreme.
Most Americans prefer can (recessed) lighting or track lighting in their homes, if they even think of architectural lighting at all, says Cori Dunn, editorial director of Residential Lighting, a Lincolnshire-based national trade publication. Cable is too fashion-forward, too European for average American tastes, she says.
Others believe Americans just need a little time.
“We’re always behind,” says Vassa, a one-name Chicago interior designer. “The Italians had it (cable lighting) in all kinds of spaces years before we ever did. . . . People aren’t used to seeing mechanisms. They are used to seeing things polished and finished.”
That’s starting to change, says Vassa, noting that she’s using more and more cable lighting in high-end residential projects-with less anxiety from the homeowner.
The homeowner converts who do exist often wax philosophical about cable lighting.
“It’s like light sculpture. It’s like creating a work of art of your own,” says Brian Goodall, who along with his wife, Nina DiSesa, installed Kable in the kitchen of their Chicago loft and in the vanity and shower area of the master bath. “The way the light hits the various surfaces becomes a whole effect unto itself. . . . The ceiling (in the kitchen) is silver and the surfaces are granite and marble. It’s a reflective environment that shows off the lighting in a nice way.”
The price is right
Good design, good quality of light is only part of the story. Price is the other.
One of Kay’s primary goals in designing lighting was to beat a comparable European product in price, while rivaling theirs in looks.
He’s been successful.
Kay estimates that a 20-foot span of cable, with three fixtures and all the electrical hardware would have cost $750 if they were bought from him 10 years ago, when he was selling the German import. Now, he sells a similar Kable package for $280.
Roving through the showroom in white shirt and tie fitting his businessman persona, Kay cites another example of the new era of cost-consciousness at Tech Lighting.
Ten years ago, a Murano glass table lamp that shimmers like a jewel atop a pedestal in the showroom would have cost $460, says Kay. Now he’s importing the lamp directly, instead of buying from an importer, and the Italian-made lamp costs $262.
Consumers have the recession to thank for all of this.
Rewind to 1987.
Black Monday had hit, sending the economy into a tailspin and Kay into a period of soul-searching.
At the time, the Tech Lighting showroom was filled with chichi Italian and German imports. But that wasn’t all.
Tech Lighting also functioned as a distributor, supplying those same European products to other lighting showrooms across the country.
Howdy, partner
With vastly fewer people able to afford expensive imported lamps and growing competition from other distibutors, price became the name of the game and Kay knew something had to give.
He decided the time was right to indulge his long-held dream to design and make lighting. He bought a manufacturing facility. He added a partner, Wally Hepkema, an electrical engineer who adds his knowledge of materials and production. And the two of them starting penciling designs.
“We work together as a team,” says Hepkema, 52, of Chicago. “He’ll have an idea and then we look at it and come up with a final design that is practical to make.”
“You can’t help but be a good designer,” says Kay, who has won design awards from The Chicago Athenaeum and the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America. “For 10 years, I’ve worked with lighting showrooms across the country and with some of the best architects and designers in the world.”
Expert advice
In addition to the Tech house brand, the Chicago showroom continues to carry a hand-picked collection of lamps, chandeliers and sconces by renowned American and Italian makers including George Kovacs, Foscarini and Ron Rezek with Artemide.
And then there’s the local bunch. Over the last nine months, Kay has been working with Chicago artists in developing lighting products. He offers them technical and creative assistance-and a retail environment to show their stuff.
The bottom line on all of this: “I’m trying to build a good company with product that’s technically correct and price-wise that fits into where it’s supposed to fit,” says Kay.
He’s doing something right. From a retail standpoint, he’s keeping designer Ron Rezek at bay.
Along with designing lighting, Rezek operates three of his own lighting showrooms on the West Coast. He wants to expand. But not to Chicago.
Starting with the name Tech Lighting and ticking off Superior Lighting and Crest (City Lights), two Chicago showrooms that also sell contemporary lighting but primarily to architects and designers, Rezek says: “Chicago is the last place I’d go.”
