Shining bright: Environmental Lighting for Architecture produces custom fixtures for theme parks, historic restorations, hotels and high-end homes.

ELSIE Dahlin had sold her company, a manufacturer of tuna processing machines, and she was getting itchy. So when she ran into Jerry Scritsmier, a part owner of Environmental Lighting for Architecture Inc., well, a light bulb went off.

"It was a very difficult time in the early 1980s, with double-digit inflation," said Dahlin. "The company was not doing well."

Scritsmier had gotten to know Dahlin when she was an office manager for a lighting maintenance company, before she set off to start the tuna equipment company. "When I called on them, she was the person I met every time," said Scritsmier, now a semi-retired minority partner in ELA.

The two were also neighbors, and they stayed in touch. When his partner died, Scritsmier started looking for someone to take over ELA's day-to-day management. For Dahlin, the timing could not have been better. At 46, she decided it was too early to be retired so she bought a stake in the business for an undisclosed price. In 1983, she came on as president, with an eye toward turning things around.

It worked. By expanding the offerings of the company, which got its start making the fixtures that lit up the film industry in Hollywood's early days, ELA's revenues grew from $2 million the year she joined in 1983 to more than $10 million in 2001.

At first glance, the move from tuna packing to custom lighting fixtures might seem odd. But to Dahlin, who moved to the United States in 1946 from Northern Ireland and never attended college, it was simple math.

"Since I handle the financial and administrative end of the business," she said, "that particular function in any business has great similarity."

From its 50,000-square-foot factory in the City of Industry, ELA today designs and manufactures lighting fixtures for the custom, outdoor and retail markets. The company also has a small foundry in Tijuana, which it purchased and upgraded in 1990, to make cast aluminum fixtures.

Glittering start

ELA traces its history to 1929, when Hollywood Lighting Fixture Co. was making lighting fixtures for film sets. Later, the company began branching out into the residential market (counting Alfred Hitchcock among its celebrity clients). Taking advantage of the burgeoning hotel market in Las Vegas during the 1950s, the company moved into hotel and commercial lighting.

In the 1970s, what was then called Custom and Architectural Lighting merged with Scritsmier's outdoor lighting manufacturing firm, Environmental Lighting for Architecture.

Today, the custom market, which accounts for half of ELA's business, includes theme parks, hotels, restaurants, historic restorations and high-end residences.

The outdoor market includes fabrication of decorative street lighting and the showroom market caters "to residential users, selling fixtures through independent showrooms throughout the United States.

Jerry Beale, a principal at interior design firm Wilson & Associates, has worked with ELA for 16 years on hotel, restaurant and residential projects. "They keep everything that they have ever done," said Beale, "and we started pulling stuff to create the most outrageous Chinese lantern. Because they've done so much with historical fixtures and the movie industry, they have such a wealth of drawings and inspiration."

A niche player, ELA thrives by making custom fixtures and customizing its catalog of standard products, as opposed to the less expensive, mass-produced imports. The fixtures themselves can be cast (poured into a mold) or fabricated (formed from raw materials), and cost anywhere from $150 to $100,000 each, with projects taking from three weeks to three months.

Hospitality plunge

The hospitality side of the business has remained an important one for ELA--it fabricated the guitar-shaped doorpulls and a chandelier of saxophones for the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas and recently completed fixtures for the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino there--but also left it vulnerable.

After reaching $10.3 million in revenues for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2001, ELA was hit by the aftereffects of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Sales fell to $5.9 million the following year, forcing the company to shed more than a third of its employees.

"We are tied to the hospitality industry and capital intensive projects, and they were not releasing capital during those difficult times," said Dahlin. "Because we deal in three markets, we're usually pretty balanced, but it has been difficult these past two and half years."

Sales of $6.4 million were posted for the year ended June 30, 2003, and Dahlin said the company was on track to reach $7 million in the current year. "We have so many projects quoted that the nice problem will be that we have to look to rehiring," said Dahlin.

ELA also plans a higher profile in the outdoor commercial market, which provided some cushion from the hospitality downturn. "Cities always want to have their identification, their own look, as opposed to using a generic fixture," said Dahlin. "Whether its putting logos on the doors or bases or whatever they want, we can make the pattern, the tooling and provide the product."

PROFILE

Environmental Lighting for Architecture Inc.

Year Founded: 1929

Core Business: Designer and manufacturer of lighting fixtures

Revenues in 2002:$5.9 million

Revenues in 2003: $6.4 million

Employees in 2002: 60

Employees in 2003: 46

Goal: Get back to previous growth through increased name recognition, and return people to employment

Driving Force: Challenge of bringing creative ideas to reality