Casting a light on his vision
IT MIGHT take only one guy to change a light bulb but it takes a highly motivated team to build a lighting retailer into a 20-year success story. For 16 of those 20 years, Lightco owner Brendan Burmeister has been part of that team and has been doing everything from fixing new fittings to the ceilings of shops, to unpacking boxes and even making bulkheads, downlights and pendants for customers in his garage, which is fondly known as the BAT (Brendan’s Afterhours Therapy) Workshop.
But now that the 35 year-old entrepreneur – who still wears the same uniform and name badge as his team – is at the helm, he admits that he’s already spending less time conjuring up original lighting solutions and more time unpacking his vision of growing the three-store operation into a national specialist retail chain.
Burmeister bought out partner and founder of Lightco, Melanie Boshi, towards the end of last year.
When Lightco started in Durban two decades ago, it was selling globes that cost R1.90 and lasted three months. Customers had a choice of screw-in or bayonet, 40 and 60 watt bulbs. Today Lightco stocks around 100 options that last for years.
The company not only sells interior and exterior lighting but a wide range of globes, extractor and ceiling fans, and electrical accessories. These are available online as well as through the Springfield Park, umhlanga and
FOR TWO DECADES, LIGHTCO HAS BEEN MOVING FORWARD WITH LIGHTING SOLUTIONS AND INNOVATION,WRITES
SHIRLEY LE GUERN
Hillcrest outlets. Lightco also does on-site consultations and designs lighting solutions on plan.
Burmeister admits that in order to, quite literally, keep the lights on, one has to constantly keep pace with new design and technology trends.
“My eyes are open wherever I go. If I stay in a hotel, I look at the lighting. If I see a newspaper or interior decorating magazine, I read it. I am always on the internet and on Pinterest, hunting new ideas.
“At the moment clusters are the in thing, so we’ve started creating our own. We’ve brought rose gold (fittings) to Durban,” he says, pointing to the designer lighting he has supplied to the upmarket Hillcrest café where he is enjoying coffee.
Burmeister first tried his hand at business as a scholar by making and selling chocolate crunchies for three years. He went on to work for a carpet cleaning operation after matric, initially turning down a job at Lightco because he didn’t want to work on weekends.
But he changed his mind and remembers telling then boss Melanie that he’d last no more than a year as, by then, he wanted to be in his own business.
That took a little longer and he rose through the ranks to become the company’s first store manager.
He then had the temerity to request a company car, as he wanted to go to see clients on site to help solve their lighting challenges.
This took the company in the direction of providing lighting solutions for large residential estates and holiday resorts.
Feeling that he had reached his ceiling, Burmeister left Lightco in 2008 to join a major tiling retailer. He ran a large outlet in Pinetown for more than a year.
When Boshi approached him in 2010 to return to Lightco and become a business partner, he brought with him a considerable amount of experience from this.
The partners put in place five and 10-year goals. If they reached their five-year target, then they would trigger a plan for Boshi to exit the business to pursue her love for home renovation.
They did, and Burmeister was at last within sight of realising his ultimate goal of owning and running his own business.
“I am just driven. I’ve got so many ideas,” he admits.
In addition to planning a Johannesburg store opening, Burmeister is importing and branding his own lighting range rather than sourcing products similar to those of competitors from the same local importers and suppliers.
Sadly, he says, just 5% of his suppliers are local as there are very few home-grown manufacturers able to produce Sabs-approved fittings competitively.
The company recently changed its tag-line to “shining into the future” which Burmeister says he is embracing on every level.
“It’s been a very dismal time.
“Everyone has been complaining. The economy is down and there’s so much negativity. But we’re not going to take part in that. We are looking forward. That’s who we are.
“When you walk into our stores, we’d like you to share our energy. We intend to be here in 10 years’ time and to be bigger and better,” says Burmeister.