CONNTACT.COM

Allison Schieffelin
The Lighting Quotient
West Haven

Let There Be Light

Allison Schieffelin builds on the legacy of her father, lighting pioneer Sy Shemitz

Most folks notice lighting only when it’s bad, explains Allison Schieffelin, chairman and CEO of the Lighting Quotient, Business New Haven’s 2010 Innovator of the Year. Her West Haven company is known for designing and manufacturing high quality, innovative energy-saving interior and exterior light fixtures.

It’s a lesson she learned from her late father, architectural lighting pioneer Sylvan R. Shemitz, who founded the firm more than 30 years ago.

Since Shemitz’s death in 2007, the 48-year-old Schieffelin has been leading the charge to carry on his legacy, making changes such as streamlining the manufacturing process, renaming the company, formerly called Sylvan R. Shemitz Designs Inc. (SRSDI), and marketing its energy-efficient products for “sustainable lighting solutions.”

The effort is generating clients — and accolades.

The Lighting Quotient’s Tambour lighting system for workplace environments won a 2009 Good Design Award from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and the European Center for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

Tambour and GlowLine products were finalists in the 2009 Buildings Magazine Product Innovation Awards, in the workplace-productivity category, and Tambour was grand prize winner in workplace productivity in Buildings Magazine’s 2009 product innovations program for exhibitors at the NeoCon World’s Trade Fair, held in Chicago last June.

The awards are merely the latest testimonies to the company’s reputation for innovation, which began in the late 1960s, when Schieffelin’s father was commissioned to light the Jefferson Memorial and invented an asymmetrical reflector design using an ellipse and two parabolas.

“He arrived upon a great idea about housing for a lighting system that effectively spread light in a more efficient manner — a patented light shade that really broke new ground internationally,” says architect Peter Newman of Newman Architects and a Lighting Quotient board member.

“The idea that lighting the ceiling and lighting the walls contribute to improving the visual experience, with environments smoothly lit from top to bottom, as opposed to just throwing a blob on a wall, was really unique and became the standard,” adds Mark Loeffler, a lighting designer and director of the New Haven office of Atelier Ten, an design and engineer firm specializing in  environmentally friendly buildings.

Loeffler, who knew Shemitz and did “occasional informal consultant work” for him, says the inventor was “dedicated to supporting the design community, and the product line evolved in response.”

He also gives the company high marks for environmental stewardship, for its approach to saving energy and resources, including using recycled materials in manufacturing and experimenting with water-based and other non-toxic finish materials.

Shemitz started a manufacturing business in 1977 to produce his Elliptipar brand of products, Schieffelin says, because he “was unable to get the quality of manufacturing he desired from third-party vendors.”

In 2006, he launched another division, Tambient, for portable task/ambient lighting for open floor-plan offices.

Says Schieffelin, who often refers to her father by his nickname Sy, “Tambient was born out of Sy’s aesthetic sense that lighting could be mounted to furniture and leave the ceiling clear, and this has proved to be the most efficient application of lighting to work spaces.”

It’s a good selling point these days, with tightening U.S. standards for energy efficiency and the recent federal emphasis on energy savings.

While Shemitz was building his business, Schieffelin, one of his three daughters, was heading down a different path.

“I went to business school with intent of going into advertising and ended up in finance.”

After graduating from Boston College with a bachelor’s degree in communications, and earning a master’s degree in marketing and finance at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, Schieffelin spent 15 years on Wall Street as a sales trader of convertible securities and derivatives.

Nevertheless, Schieffelin says her father wanted her to run his business “since I was little,” and “was constantly badgering me to get out of the gambling world of Wall Street and come home.”

She finally did, after being awarded at least $12 million as part of a $54 million settlement in 2004 of a landmark sex-discrimination action against Morgan Stanley filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  

In 2005, Schieffelin spend a year shadowing her father at work and “absorbing his philosophy.

“We decided some of our inventions were really appropriate to the retail environment and started marketing to small boutiques and larger retailers,” she recalls. “It was never the right time to work together because he really loved running the company.”

When Shemitz died at the helm of his sailboat Light Fantastic in Long Island Sound in July 2007, the victim of an apparent heart attack, Schieffelin became his successor.

“I knew I had to fix the factory first,” she says. One of her first moves was to hire a new vice president of manufacturing, former Lego executive David Okamoto, to modernize the  manufacturing process and boost employee morale through the implementation of kaizen, a Japanese strategy for increasing quality, productivity and worker satisfaction.

Schieffelin says she has avoided layoffs over the past “tough” year through employee participation in group kaizen exercises aimed at identifying and solving specific problems.   

One such exercise resulted in rearranging workstations so more outdoor light enters the building.

Schieffelin also has doubled the size of the design engineer department to 20 people. This, she says, has “unleashed creative talent that has just exploded in the past couple of years.”

Shemitz mentored some of the designers, who have been with the company for more than two decades.  

“We are innovating based on that experience,” Schieffelin says, “and I credit not just our current success but future success to them.”

Other improvements include consolidating product lines, developing sophisticated control systems for enhanced energy savings, upgrading outdoor fixtures to a more stringent international standard and rebranding to reflect the company’s focus on sustainable products.



At the company West Haven headquarters, an early 20th century former textile mill at 114 Boston Post Road, Schieffelin shows off a Waterwall in the lobby, which demonstrates an outdoor fixture and is part of a recent trade show display of the Lighting Quotient’s eco-friendly products.

In the factory area, a worker is spray-painting metal parts, which are attached to an overhead conveyor belt and travel slowly toward an oven. Other employees are assembling parts or packing them.

Schieffelin stops frequently to greet them.

The Jefferson Memorial is the subject of photos hanging in an employee cafeteria.

Photos showcasing some of the company’s handiwork, which includes places like Grand Central Terminal’s façade, the New York Public Library reading rooms and the JetBlue terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, adorn the walls in a conference room where training programs are regularly held for visitors as well as the sales force.

“For a long time they’ve been trying to educate the public, engineers, owners and architects about the value of buying high-quality light fixtures,” Newman says. “I think the time is right for them. The efficiency quotient and metrics that were the genesis of the company is in the forefront of peoples’ concerns more than ever because of energy efficiency and all of the standards were are now mandated to meet.”

One new client, Golub Corp., parent company of the Price Chopper supermarket chain, sought out the Lighting Quotient specifically for its inventiveness.

“They had an innovative light fixture which eliminated the need for ceiling lights in an office area,” says Frank Blake, electrical specialist for the company, which is building a 240,000-square-foot headquarters in Schenectady, N.Y. “They were able to incorporate the newest model of their Tambient fixture so efficiently [that] you can walk through office without additional lighting. Our goal to be platinum LEED, so we got points toward LEED [by using Tambient] as well as over a 30-percent reduction of watts per square foot, which is an incredible payback on energy consumption.

“With their help, we took the process a step further, incorporating daylight and occupancy controls,” Blake adds. “The lights will dim when daylight enters the office area and when it is unoccupied. They provided the controls, which are wireless, with day lighting sensors that are solar-powered.”

Price Chopper also is using Tambient fixtures in the filing and design areas of its headquarters, Blake says, because “it provides such a warm, natural-light feeling, with no glare on paper or computers, and an even gentle light that provides more than sufficient lighting, which certainly promotes productivity.”

Lighting Quotient fixtures will be lighting supermarket department signage and  illuminating the office of Price Chopper’s new Middletown (Connecticut) store, which will have a fuel cell, and the company is “considering a very new fixture that directs the light more towards the merchandise than the floor” for a new supermarket in Saratoga, N.Y.

Schieffelin is optimistic the company will continue to attract clients with evermore innovations, and already has propelled it on a proactive path in developing products reflecting forthcoming lighting standards.

“It is really Sy’s passion to put light where it’s needed to create visual comfort and interest that drives all the inventions here,” she says, noting the biggest hurdles include keeping up with the increasingly rapid pace of innovation and competition from foreign countries such as China.

Schieffelin seems undaunted by the giant shadow her father cast over the enterprise she now guides.

Seated in his chair, at his desk, she says, “I was meant to do this.

“I share his passion for winning and I share his ethical standards for doing it right.

“We are getting warmed up,” she adds,” and have the talent, wherewithal and energy — both wattage and psychic — to solve new challenges.”