Protect and Grow Manufacturing Jobs in Connecticut
Quote from thehill.com : Labor Day is about celebrating the sacrifices working people have
made to the shared prosperity of this country. It’s about valuing people, regardless of where
they were born, for their work and the contributions they make to the economic well-being of
our great country.
Thank you Governor Malloy, thank you Senator Blumenthal, thank you Congresswoman
DeLauro, and thank you commissioner Smith. Special thanks to Congresswoman Esty for
organizing and calling this Field Hearing on Made in America Manufacturing.
Please welcome my mom, Paula Shemitz, who is now CEO of Light Fantastic Realty. She is the
owner of The Lighting Quotient’s worldwide corporate headquarters building, a facility in the
Historical National Register that was the home of the New Haven Mills. The Veterans
Administration is our respected and only tenant for over 15 years, and you may recall hearing
from me over the last several weeks on behalf of my family with regard to some negotiations that
we are undertaking with the regional contract office in order to secure the best home for the
VA’s new CRRC facility.
I am Allie Schieffelin (Allison Shemitz Schieffelin Walker), and my company is The Lighting
Quotient, a 5th generation family, and a 3rd generation manufacturing business in Connecticut.
We manufacture high quality lighting products, visible worldwide, and we are in the thick of the
Industry wide technology transformation to LED. We are grateful to have an interest advantaged
loan from the CT DECD, and for the programs that are offered, particularly the voucher
programs for incumbent worker training and R&D.
I’m here to tell you my Made in America Manufacturing story, and to bring an idea that I believe
you will find has merit.
So first, what we make:
Energy Saving, code compliant lighting products. (DLC, Energy Star, UL, CSA, and Lighting
Facts Labels).
Products for infrastructure including rail and train stations, bridges and tunnels, and airports with
both indoor and outdoor lighting fixtures.
Products for Buildings at local community and state schools, natatoriums, art galleries and
gymnasiums and field houses of all types.
Products for commercial spaces, including our office lighting fixtures with wireless, patent
pending controls that deliver better office lighting with deep energy discounts.
Patents. 100 patents worldwide and new patents in LED lighting.—lighting optics, controls and
designs.
We made the lighting fixtures that the US Architect of the Capitol selected to highlight the US
Capitol Dome Project so that visitors can see the dome silhouette while restoration progresses.
We made the lighting fixtures for The Martin Luther King Memorial, the Mumbai Airport and
for an Olympic Equestrian facility in Qatar. We have lighting products in Princeton University’s
new Firestone Library and we just won an Architectural Lighting Award for being a part of the
advanced, energy efficient and architecturally beautiful lighting in Microsoft’s newest server
center. These projects have the eyes of the most scrupulous architectural product specifiers.
All of our employees (with few exceptions in field sales and design) work out of our West
Haven, CT home where we design, test, fabricate and ship advanced lighting products, Our
products are based on our own Intellectual Property, and have received multiple awards from the
Department of Energy’s Next Gen Awards, a designation of LED Innovation. We are a local
IBEW union shop, a Made in America Manufacturer (over 90% of the content of our products is
made in America), and have very recently passed our current GSA and WBENC audits.
Why call us?
Women’s Business Enterprise
U.S. Green Building Council
Cradle to Cradle (C2C) Silver
Energy Star Partner
U.S. General Services Administration
BUY AMERICAN
Buy American
Union Made
Q-0007S
Because of the LED lighting revolution, in just 5 years The Lighting Quotient has lost 60% of
our traditional lighting products revenues. Tungsten (filament), high intensity discharge
including Metal Halide (HID), and even fluorescent tube products sales are declining fast, and
much faster than either the Department of Energy or any 3rd party research resources ever
forecasted.
Every possible dollar of cash flow from sales revenue in the last eight years has been devoted to
R&D. What hasn’t gone into LED R&D has been tightly allocated to marketing efforts
announcing the new products that have come out of our Research and Development efforts. No
money to employee raises in almost 5 years. Or to new hires. Probably the right size for our 15
million dollar business is approximately 85 employees and so I am operating hand to mouth in a
struggle to keep my 100 core, talented employee base.
You might ask: Why aren’t we thriving? And what about thriving at least in our home state of
Connecticut? Why are we not in Yale’s new Residential College Quad, Alexion
Pharmaceutical’s brand new Headquarters, Bob Landino’s Continuum Care and College and
Crown projects, all of the WinStanley Developments and the 12 new Gilbane schools? How and
why do I not get regular and repeat Connecticut business?
There are two answers: cost and cost.
China and Mexico are largely the sources of cheaper (mostly lower quality) products, at roughly
a 20% price discount to our well constructed, fully code compliant light fixtures. If we lower our
prices further, either R&D will have to stop, employment be reduced, participation in educational
and R&D voucher programs deferred, and/or quality marginalized. It is all a fast prescription for
the quick demise of The Lighting Quotient.
The other costs are related to doing business in the United States and particularly here in
Connecticut. Now I’m not like others who continuously whine about taxes and healthcare and
cost of living and other costs of business. Like my father, Sy Shemitz, I love to pay my taxes,
keep all of my employees fully insured, and watch my employees' children advance through the
educational institutions that consistently rank high in the country. I have cut into processes,
people, and eked out savings where I can, and now we’re just down to a revenue problem.
You, respected representatives of the state, have the same or similar problems. Despite the
smartest lean cuts in spending, and more cuts after that, you get down to a core service level that
can’t be compromised, and yet the revenues don’t support that core programming level. More
tax cuts –like price cuts at The Lighting Quotient—mostly come from compromising quality and
sacrificing long term beneficial projects in infrastructure that could lead to future growth.
With more revenues, Connecticut can grow and prosper, but people and companies are leaving
the state faster than you can keep up. At The Lighting Quotient, we are still losing non-LED
sales faster than we can make more new LED product inventions. Despite the fact that we have
doubled our LED sales every year since 2010, won multiple awards, and despite lower margins,
can make a profit in LED. So the ultimate need for the state and for The Lighting Quotient to
remain competitive in Connecticut and in the US is to dramatically increase revenues quickly so
that we can cover our fixed costs, retain the best and brightest in our workforce, and contribute to
the Connecticut and US communities at large.
The Lighting Quotient can be Connecticut’s next, best, clean energy,
advanced manufacturing company.
With respect to the state of Connecticut economic food chain, you've got us surrounded! Below
us on the pyramid you are supporting STEM education. (The Lighting Quotient annually
conducts a program to educate local high school and university teachers learn how we apply best
engineering practices to our design and manufacturing processes.) Start UP programs for
startup companies are just above that, adding new ranks of entrepreneurs to Connecticut
ingenuity. The Business Express program gets smaller companies moving, and now the
designation by President Obama as an IMCP (Investing in Manufacturing Communities
Partnership) will secure our proud defense and aerospace history and to help grow our greatest
corporate stalwarts.
Respectfully you are missing a part of the economic food chain that could contribute massively
to Connecticut’s future with just a little bit of help that won’t cost much. I represent the group of
manufactures that CAN be part of the tech future. I represent the companies that already employ
Connecticut workers, from factory laborers to elite engineers. I represent the companies that are
capable of returning to vibrancy, quickly, right here at home. I am asking for you to look at the
medium sized manufacturing companies at the backbone of the state’s manufacturing base.
The largest employers create cornerstones for the state. The smallest
companies are the gravel for the foundation. Your Connecticut
manufacturing base, those of us that have survived and stayed, are the
concrete that holds the foundation together.
I use economic reason to say that the largest and smallest companies also contribute to the
volatility of the economic growth curve. If you lose one large manufacturer it can be hugely
impactful on a whole community. On the flipside, the turnover in small, entrepreneurial ventures
is also perennially high, adding to volatility. It is your stalwart old-line manufacturing companies
that have much lower volatility and could benefit the greatest from your attention.
We are that middle core. Today we use 65 Connecticut Vendors in our production, and 476 US
Vendors total. (A list of Connecticut vendors is at the end of my comments.) My guess is that
any conglomerate that manufacturers overseas would find substitutes for all.
My idea is that you give a pricing discount by way of a tax incentive for the purchase of CT
made products on CT projects, across the board to level the cost playing field versus foreign
imports. Contractors are all too ready to substitute cheap foreign materials and eliminate the
manufacturers whose product was originally specified by scrupulous architects and engineers. If
you take away the negative incentive to use low quality products, you will find better projects
yield dividends to all of the residents of the state.
We can easily produce a Connecticut Vendor List, just like a WBE vendor list, Approved Energy
Advisor list, etc…. and offer any contractors in the state a discount on CT made products.
Simple. You will quickly create an exponential growth network of businesses that produce solid
and lasting returns to the entire Connecticut community. It is a win- win for the state; the state
gets more revenue, the schools, public works/ infrastructure, and commercial projects get high
quality materials, and the manufacturers thrive. It is also a best Green Building practice to use
locally sourced materials, and contributes to USGBC LEED Building points.
At a minimum, don’t let any Connecticut funded or tax-advantaged projects to suffer competitive
disadvantage. By supporting a discount or credit on Connecticut Manufactured products you
support your own taxpayers. Don’t let CT aerospace, military, defense or infrastructure projects
funded or supported by Federal dollars use inferior overseas products.
I get phone calls and emails from China, South Carolina, and recently also Georgia every day,
and the vulture capitalists are circling, waiting for me to drop so that they can scoop up my
remains and dump them into a conglomerate with manufacturing overseas. Don’t let this happen
to another Made In America Manufacturer.
We are now making our way to producing 100% of our revenues from LED lighting sales
profitably, and with your help we can get there quickly. Buy American. Level the playing field.
See us, all Connecticut manufacturers, become your best advanced manufacturing partners.
CT VENDORS LIST:
A D PERKINS CO
ABCO WHOLESALE DIST LLC
ACUTAPE CORP
ADVANTAGE SHEET METAL MANUFACTURING CO
ALL-TECH SPECIALTY FASTENERS
ANSONIA STEEL
APPLIED RUBBER & PLASTICS INC
ARDMORE BUSINESS FORMS
ARNOLD SUPPLY INC
AUBURN MFG INC
AUTOMATIC MACHINE PROD INC
B & B THREADED COMPONENTS INC
BEARING DISTRIBUTORS INC
BMS TOOL & DIE LLC
CARLSON SPRING CO
COLONY HARDWARE SUPPLY CO
CONSUMERS INTERSTATE CORP
DANBURY SQUARE BOX CO INC
DESHERBININ PRODUCTS INC
DG PRECISION MFG
ECONOMY SPRING & STAMPING CO
EDWIN GAYNOR CO INC
ELECTRICAL WHOLESALERS INC
ELECTRONIC CONNECTION CORP
FILTERTECH
FW WEBB
GLOBAL PALLET SOLUTIONS LLC
GRAINGER INC
HEILIND ELECTRONICS INC
IMS INC
JMS METAL PRODUCTS
LIGHT METALS COLORING INC
LYONS TOOL & DIE CO INC
MADISON POLYMERIC ENGINEERING
MANGER DIE CASTING INC
McMULLIN MANUFACTURING CORP
MSC FILTRATION TECHNOLOGIES
MSC INDUSTRIAL SUPPLY CO INC
NEMTEC INC
NEW ENGLAND CAP CO
OLSON BROTHERS INC
PATRIOT MANUFACTURING
PILGRIM ELECTRONICS INC
PPG ARCHITECTURAL FINISHES INC
PREMIER GRAPHICS LLC
R & D PRECISION INC
RELIABLE PLATING
RINTEC CORP
ROBINSON TAPE AND LABEL INC
S L COOKE INC
SETON IDENTIFICATION PRODUCTS
SHERWIN WILLIAMS-ORANGE
SHORELINE PACKAGING INC
SOUND MANUFACTURING
SOUTHINGTON TOOL & MANUFACTURING
SPECIALTY PACKAGING
SPECIALTY SAW INC
STANPAK CO
STEPHEN GOULD CORPORATION
SWANSON TOOL MANUFACTURING
TURTLE & HUGHES INC
UNIMETAL SURFACE FINISHING
VALLEY CONTAINER INC
VANGUARD PRODUCTS INC
YARDE METALS INC