Sales Manager Haley Discusses Custom Lighting Solutions by WiLL

Introduction

Adam: Cool, so we're going to talk
about some custom capabilities here at Wisconsin Lighting Lab. Haley's worked
on quite a few projects in the last few months where we kind of showcase some
custom things that we can do. We've always been really good on the custom
fabrication side when it comes to light poles and welding and machining and
custom finishes, and what we've done really the last 12 months is we've started
to incorporate some of the electrical and the lighting side of things. I don't
think customers and maybe our sales partners are always fully aware of the
breadth of what we have to offer from that standpoint. I just want to go
through a couple recent examples that showcase our capabilities.

The Airport Project

Adam: We did an airport job — it was
one of the largest airports in the U.S. — and it was interesting how that
project came to us. They were looking for really any old area light at a low
cost, and I remember we talked, like, hey, let's take a little different
approach to this. Let's actually try and solve what we felt as though was going
to be the harder solution, which was the custom fabrication, the custom light
poles. And then the lighting side of it will just be almost kind of the fine
print after all the tough stuff is solved. Why don't you go through the early
details, and how you worked that project?

Haley: So that specific airport job —
they came to us and kind of had a general idea of what they were looking for.
They got turned away from other manufacturers of “this is too custom, didn't
really want to take the time to take a look at it.” So they came to us and
said, hey, is this something you guys can do? I think something that was super
appealing to them as well was that we could do both the pole and the fixture,
so getting it from one manufacturer is obviously very helpful, having it all
come from one place. So I gathered the details of that, pulled in my expert
pole masters — Mr. Nick and Randy.

Adam: Yeah.

Haley: They helped me out a lot on
this one. Really, we just had a great direct line of communication with the
engineer, the contractor on the job — all of us got together. The agent was
great at facilitating that, so we were able to get together and talk about
exactly what the application was and what the outcome they wanted. That was how
we started that project. Then it moved into the design phase — we were able to
give them a conceptual drawing that was very helpful for them to look at and
see, this is what your end product is going to be. From the conceptual phase, a
photometric was also really helpful. So giving them all those details up front,
I think, really helped sell that job.

Cutting Through Spec Packets

Adam: I think one of the things that's
interesting is all the details that are in the spec packet and how — I'm not to
sound negative — but how little of that is actually relevant to what the
customer wants. Every single day we see these specification packets that are in
some cases hundreds of pages long, and what's relevant to us is in some cases
like half a page. So what we do a good job of is kind of changing the narrative
a little bit, where every other manufacturer might say, okay, we're going to go
through this line by line and we're going to give them our closest equal to
every specification. What we did is we said, okay, we'll definitely go through
that at some point to make sure we're meeting the most important requirements,
but let's start with a concept. Let's make sure that we get in touch with the
right people, talk to the engineer, talk to the rep, and give them a concept.
Our design team and our engineering team — we've been putting together what's
called a project hero card, so we'll do a very high-level design concept. We've
done a variety of these recently, and it's just a nice way to get on the same
page without doing 20 hours of work.

Haley: And we know how complicated
these projects can get. As you continue down the process, I think it's helpful
for them to simplify it right away and just say, let's start here. I remember
on that project, we also switched from doing the traditional bullhorn to doing
more of a spoke bracket look, so I think that was super helpful for them to
say, okay, yeah, I like this concept, let's move forward with it, instead of
spending 20 hours on a more detailed drawing.

Why Are Poles and Fixtures Thought of Separately?

Adam: Here's an interesting question.
You've been in the lighting industry for a little over a year now — why do you
think people think of light poles and fixtures as separate assemblies? To me
it's always been, why is it not thought of as the same assembly? What's your
observation on that?

Haley: I think it's just — we're
unique in that we're one of those manufacturers that offer both. There are a
lot of manufacturers that are just light poles, or just fixtures. That's a
great question. I'm not sure why it always is the concept of thinking of them
as separate.

Pre-Assembly & The Perimeter Security Project

Adam: That's a good segue. We did a
couple other custom designs recently, and a couple of these we can't get into
too many details on because they're for pretty high-profile end users. But
we're doing more pre-assembly of the entire system at our facility, and we kind
of steal some of this from the sports lighting world, where a lot of times in
sports lighting you take on more of the whole assembly — it could be the
footing, the pole, the bracket, the wiring harness, the remote power, the
control system. We're starting to apply some of that to some of these custom
solutions. One of those was a perimeter security application we worked on a
couple weeks ago. Did that one follow a similar path to the airport one?

Haley: Yeah, exactly. They came to me
and said, here's what we're looking for. They didn't even really have a drawing
or anything, but just described what they were looking for — this is the
concept, can you put something together? They were showing that they wanted
something where it was already attaching to the fence they have in place, the
poles that are in place. So they wanted to make it more simple. I think that's
kind of how this is all tying together — the simplicity, make it easy. Make it
easy for everyone. Having it pre-assembled and shipping from the factory
obviously makes it a lot easier for contractors and everyone involved. So that
is definitely an appealing thing, and some feedback that I got.

Digital Manufacturing vs. Tooled Designs

Adam: Nice. It's interesting because
that ability is fundamental to the way that we approach our designs. A lot of
companies, when they design a new product, they tool up — so there's a specific
tool to make a specific part, and really you're locked into that design and
that tool until you have paid off the tool. If you're going to tool for a new
area light and it's $200,000 to pay for that tool, there's this incentive to
only use that one configuration. We've taken more of a digital manufacturing
approach, where we use extruded processes or sheet-metal fabrication or even
some 3D printing. What it allows us to do is, as we get new information — could
be on a custom project, could be from testing that we do, and say, hey, we can
improve that, we can improve this — we can actually update that design.

Adam: So for our sales partners out
there and our customers, we certainly are very open to custom projects. We like
working on them. It's fun. It's great to start with a high-level concept and
then eventually turn that into a physical product. But it really takes a
commitment from the sales partner and from the factory to come up with a
solution, because otherwise there are situations where a lot of time gets
spent. I think we've gotten a much better sense over the last few months for,
okay, this is a hell yes that we go after, or maybe this one isn't quite in our
wheelhouse. How do you vet that in your own sales process?

Haley: It's definitely the more
details, the better. So finding a partner that's willing to get all of the
necessary parties in one room — I think that's the key.

Adam: Get the engineer, the
contractor, in some cases the sales professional, and then on our end — is it a
light pole-specific job? It might be a Nick or a Randy situation. If it's
controls, it might be Tyler, Brian, or Ryan. If it's lighting, it could be Jake,
could be Trent. I think you can just accomplish so much through a five-minute
conversation if the right people are talking.

Haley: Yeah, exactly. Saves us time,
and saves kind of the hearsay as well, because when you have the middleman —
yep, exactly. So that is the key, is just having all the necessary parties in
one room to talk about it. That's going to get us the best results.

Who Else Does Custom?

Adam: Do you see anybody else in the
market doing this? I know there's one name that comes up quite a bit — they
were actually acquired by Acuity at some point — Winona Lighting. We've gotten
compared to them many times because they're from Minnesota. I'm not sure if
they still operate there, but they're kind of the OG of taking on custom
applications. But it seems like in general, factories are getting away from
that. Do you see other names come up, or in general, people don't want to touch
these projects?

Haley: Yeah, I've really seen the
latter. It's really been — kind of cool getting the feedback from partners of
us taking the initiative to look at something and vet it and do our best to
provide a possible solution. I really haven't seen many other names come up.
They kind of just stick with us — we'll take it.

Adam: Alright, well, thank you very
much.

Haley: Yeah, thanks for talking. Thank
you.