Company Expands, Looks to the Future
Starting around 2007, Albert Chauvet would take time out of his busy day to go visit empty warehouses. His lighting company had grown exponentially over the years and was now bursting at the seams, taking up four separate buildings. The success he and his wife Berenice had experienced since opening their doors in 1990 had reached a breaking point. The company was busting at the seams with 40,000 square feet and separate buildings all adding up to logistical challenges.Yet in reviewing property, nothing seemed like the right fit, and certainly didn’t make sense on paper. “The older buildings I saw needed so much retro-fitting it didn’t make financial sense,” he says. So they made the commitment to create something from the ground up that would fit their unique needs. And their imaginations ran wild.
A New Home Base
Today, visitors are impressed. The 75,000-square-foot facility is built for maximizing their workflow, research and development, and efficiency. Based in Sunrise, Fla., their new home features a warehouse that allows for faster shipping, reducing turnaround for their customers. And they have room to grow, which they are fully intent on doing.
“We’ve implemented green technology in the building,” says Albert Chauvet, the company’s CEO. “There are skylights throughout the building.” Sensors, adding just the right amount of electric light with the sunlight monitor the skylights. A solar energy system captures energy, and that, too, reduces electricity needs. Add to that list paperless accounting and HR systems and it all results in serious energy savings.
The company’s R&D department hums with nine people and is now 10 times as large as before. The new location also features a large room for product testing.
A temperature control room is part of a strict quality control process that reviews “nearly every shipment from every container,” and it all has to meet a standard before leaving the facility. The shipping process is software-driven, and robotic machines get orders out the door faster than ever. Even the aisles are made so they are just big enough for the forklifts to get through, but not much bigger.
Chauvet has expanded its marketing department as well — in fact, they’ve added a total of 27 associates since the opening of the facility, bringing the total number of people working there to 85. “We have wonderful and talented people in every division, which allows me to look for more business,” Chauvet says, noting particular efforts to ramp up efforts to serve the professional market.
New Horizons
Now that the dust has settled, Albert Chauvet is pleased with the decision to create a custom HQ, where “we have the space to organize our business into different sections.” The company has a team that oversees the club/DJ market, another for the professional market, and a separate sister company, Iluminarc, focused on architectural lighting products. They all have one thing in common: “We’re definitely pushing energy efficiency in all our products.”
As for Chauvet himself, “I’m still the visionary working on the over-all strategy for the company.” Some of that includes thinking globally: Their next step will be to launch Chauvet Europe later this year. “We will continue to grow in professional lighting or related market segments that we can step in and offer a value proposition, and the next big part of our growth will be the international market.”
The move itself was a “back breaker, but we got it done!” he laughs. “Now we’re stronger than ever, and we’ll keep pushing the envelop with green technology and attending to our core business.”
So do the Chauvets get big plushy offices? “It’s a little better than before,” he laughs. “But here, the bigger we get, the more humble we get — that’s a big part of our culture.”
