He's no light weight.

But Wall Street still doesn't appreciate what Craig Winn has done at lighting firm Dynasty Classics

"And so, over lunch, he handed me a personal check for $1 million," recalls Craig Winn, 38, founder, chairman and chief executive of lamp manufacturer and distributor Dynasty Classics Inc. "That was our start-up money. It was one of those personalized checks, with pictures of sailboats on it."

That was 1986. The lunch was with Dwight Stuart, scion and former president of the Carnation dairy empire.

Winn, with nine years under his belt as a manufacturers' rep, had outlined to Stuart a plan to build a major lamp maker and distributor. The latter liked what he heard. "Stuart really became my mentor," says Winn. "The whole world should get to know Stuart. He is a very shrewd businessman."

Armed with cash, Winn, who had already assembled a management team, began buying lamps in Taiwan and selling same to The Price Club, one of the early discount retailers.

And sell he did: $2 million in the first year, $16 million the next. "The first lamp was a children's teddy-bear lamp," says Winn. "Not very glamorous, but it got us off the ground."

Indeed. By 1992, Dynasty Classics was selling just under $100 million worth of lamps, interior lighting and related accessories.

Winn took Dynasty Classics public in 1990, and it is now the nation's leading manufacturer and distributor of residential decorative lighting, with huge accounts, such as Wal-Mart, Kmart, and Sears Roebuck -- indeed, 95 percent of Sears' lamps come from Dynasty Classics.

Overnight success for the young champion Winn, still a couple bucks shy of age 40?

Well, yes and no. Winn may have started Dynasty Classics six years ago, but he began learning the business of selling goods to retailers at his father's knee -- literally.

"My father was a manufacturers' rep, and he kept his office in the house, right next to the kitchen," recalls Winn, of his ancestral Sierra Madre homestead. "He often brought the latest product he was repping, and put it out on the couch. He would ask us, 'Do you think it is going to sell? What do you think?'"

By the time Winn was five years old, "I knew I wanted to be in business. I knew I wanted to sell," he says.

However, Winn recalls that his father advised him, "Don't ever do this," when discussing the manufacturers' rep business. "He joked, 'You can marry more money in five minutes than you can make in a lifetime.'"

The life of the professional, a lawyer or top-flight accountant, was to be admired. But, like father, like son. Winn became a manufacturers' rep after graduating from USC, where he belonged to the Kappa Sigma fraternity.

After college, he started Winn Co. and married a non-millionaire. "I think the only financial asset Catharine (Winn's wife) had was the down payment on her car. I married for love."

Winn Co. repped for products such as Nordic Ware pots and pans, Health-O-Meter scales and Wallace Leisure Products, a furniture manufacturer.

But as the 1980s unfolded, many of the retailers of the day -- Gemco, Fedmart, The Akron, Ole's -- were going out of business, victim of changes in retailing and, in part, the emergence of the big discount store, such as Wal-Mart or Home Depot.

"I was watching my livelihood disappear," remembers Winn. Facing economic gloom, he approached The Price Club and asked, "What one product line offers the greatest chance for large volume sales?" He was told, "Residential lighting."

As he speaks, Winn exudes an unusual Southern Californian mix of properness and informality. His shirt is an upper-crusty, almost British-looking pinstripe, and his clothes the type favored by the blueblood set. In anything, he looks like a Brit from the pre-Beatles era.

But his demeanor is unmistakably friendly and unpompous. "I knew if Dynasty Classics was to prosper, I had to hire a lot of people with a lot more talent than I had," he says at one point, describing plans laid last year to boost Dynasty Classic profits.

Then there is Winn's offices in the industrial city of Carson, which previous tenants had altered to something akin to a New Orleans love parlor, with hidden wall beds, wet bars and red walls and carpets. "We had the bed taken out, and put in the new carpeting," says Winn, looking down at the new blue-grey nap. "The wet bar is still there," he says pointing, "but as you can see, I use it as a place to have pictures of my family."

Some gizmos remain, such as a motorized false wall, which, when commanded by remote control, lifts slowly to unveil ... a set of file cabinets. "I don't know what they kept in there before," says Winn, a bit whimsically.

Still, it has not all been easy sailing for Winn, since getting the nautically themed million-dollar check. True, Dynasty Classics roared out of the batter's box back in May 1990, when it went public at $11.25-a-share, and soon traded up to $18.50.

But by the first quarter of 1991, a Dynasty Classic share could be had for less than a bottle of beer at a bar -- $2. Local rival reps joked that the company should be called "Die-Nasty Classic."

The problem? No sooner had Dynasty Classics begun reporting its financials to the world than Saddam Hussein decided to invade Kuwait -- and a national recession deepened.

Sales gains were had, but getting those sales cost a pretty penny, and so the cost of sales mounted.

Profits for the lamp maker dimmed, falling to a paltry $164,000 on revenues of $94.7 million in 1991. Black ink could have more than doubled if Winn had foregone his $250,000-a-year salary.

Costs had to be pared at every opportunity, recalls Winn. Last year was staged as a comeback year. Staff was cut, and lines rethought. Some production was shifted to Mexico.

"We cut operating costs by 32 percent," says Winn, who owns nearly 40 percent of the company's stock.

So far, Wall Street has not noticed Winn's efforts, and Dynasty Classics stock, in recent trading, commanded only $2.37 a share. For the first three fiscal quarters of 1992, the company was $592,000 in the red on sales of $68.5 million, although the third quarter (the latest reported) was profitable.

There have been other disappointments for Winn, such as the day last year his two top salespeople quit -- and showed up working for a direct competitor 24 hours later, at a national trade show in Chicago.

"They left here on Tuesday, and on Wednesday they were selling for the competition at the show," remembers Winn. "You see the darker side of human nature on the sales side."

Making matters worse: For some reason, orders for certain lamp lines from stores had been blocked in the computer system -- and those lines were very similar to ones the defecting salespeople were selling for their new bosses.

"We seem to be able to get quality people in every area except sales," says Winn. "That has always been a problem area."

Winn will not forecast future earnings at Dynasty Classic, citing Securities and Exchange Commission rules. Still, he looks comfortable and has assembled a new management team at the top of Dynasty Classics. "I have learned I must delegate. I can't do everything hands-on," he says.

The national economy is recovering, even if the Southland remains in the doldrums.

"In this business, you allow yourself about one second for frustration, and then you go out and seek more opportunities," Winn says. "You can't cry over spilled milk."

SNAPSHOT

Craig Winn

Native of: Pasadena Resident of: Palos Verdes Age: 38 Education: B.S. from University of Southern California