ASD Lighting: Brighter By Design
As lighting designer and manufacturer ASD Lighting prepares for its 25th anniversary celebrations, managing director Tony Stewart explains how manufacturing excellence allows the company to stay one step ahead of a changing industry and cope with a host of challenges, from high volume manufacturing in the Far East to increasing demands for low energy products
Written by James Hurley & Produced by Sean Quantrill
Based in Rotherham, ASD Lighting offers a comprehensive range of decorative commercial lighting. The company aims to manufacture and sell products that combine practical and time saving installation features for industrial applications with an attractive and hard wearing design. ASD celebrates its 25th anniversary in November, and managing director Tony Stewart is proud of the progress the company has made in that time.
Targeting a non-mainstream market
“Over 25 years as a manufacturer, we’ve had to exercise at all times the efficiencies that we can deliver with regard to low cost manufacturing, competing with the Far East and being able to deliver in our market, which is non mainstream,” Stewart explains. “We need to keep our competitive edge with quality products that are spread over many areas of the lighting market, but primarily the professional lighting market - the commercial, industrial, non-domestic market.
“Over the last three years we’ve invested over £5 million on factory premises allowing us to streamline fast flow manufacturing using hi-tech machinery and state of the art factory premises. This has allowed us to be able to cope with the increasing business, which has trebled in the last five years.”
Acquiring the factories adjacent to its existing premises in Rotherham has allowed ASD to add an extra 45,000 square feet of capacity, 25,000 which is used purely for manufacturing with the remainder reserved for warehouse space. Handling the manufacturing in-house allows ASD to leverage a number of advantages. This has been important in terms of maintaining the company’s identity in a changing market, with many companies outsourcing their manufacturing to the Far East.
“A lot of people understand the benefits of the Chinese market. What they don’t understand is although the labour is cheap, the tendency to control the business is very difficult. It’s important to understand what they’re good at, namely high volume, mainstream products. We’re good at manufacturing designed, developed, high performance products.” Stewart likes to say that his company is in the business of producing ‘Ferrari products’, as they combine performance with good looks. “They also have to be easy to install for a contractor because time is money. We can get our products to the contractor in very short leads times. 60 percent of orders will leave the same day they are placed and 95 percent will go out within three days. Even specials are done in a week to ten days.”
Manufacturing advantages
Being a manufacturer allows ASD Lighting to quickly adapt and evolve. “The big ongoing opportunity for the business involves being able to expand my business by means of new products,” says Stewart. “If we believe that we can manufacture in a changing market where there’s a need for low energy consumption, we can develop that product. Being a manufacturer gives us the flexibility to manufacture to what the market is looking at during any period. We can react quickly to any changes in technology in the market,
“If customers are looking at design build we can adjust very quickly so we can bring about changes in fittings for any purpose. We can grow in existing markets but also create new specialised markets, including applications such as fire hazardous conditions as in the off-shore oil and gas markets. There are many opportunities but the one that we look very closely at today is the needs of local authorities and architects. In terms of restricting factors, with any mainstream products which are built in volume and made in China then we simply can’t compete. In this sense we work to our strengths.
“Our big investments are products which are for today and tomorrow’s markets,” he continues. “Our R&D is about looking at current needs and changes in lamp technology. As a lighting manufacturer, the investment is to accommodate new lamp technology and look at the products with regards to the green issues which is a global responsibility. We also take into account the WEEE directive, which is about being responsible for recycling products.” The directive aims ‘to prevent, or to limit as far as practicable, negative effects on the environment’ caused by the incineration and co-incineration of waste.
“The aesthetics of what we do is a very important factor, we have to make people’s heads turn, but the aesthetics have to be backed up by performance, especially in the professional market. We’re in a competitive market but the customer is the jury, they decide. So we have to use our manufacturing efficiencies to get a product to the customer that looks like a Ferrari, drives like a Ferrari, but doesn’t cost the same as a Ferrari!”
Building relationships
As head of a company that has grown with its staff, suppliers and customers, Tony Stewart stresses the importance of the relationships that it builds, especially with suppliers. “It sounds obvious,” he says, “but with materials you have to look at suppliers. Business is about people. We’ve grown from a small to a medium size company and I’ve seen that the supply situation is a very important thing. We build relationships with our suppliers, some larger companies that I won’t name struggle to keep long term suppliers because they haven’t built on this aspect. We look for good suppliers who can guarantee performance and delivery of raw materials to us at all times in a competitive market. The most important thing is that suppliers see the needs of our market, not necessarily the needs of ASD. We’re looking for speed of delivery, quality of product, and the desire for a long relationship with ASD. What we can’t afford to be doing is changing suppliers on a regular basis. That would mean that we can’t talk from experience with regard to the quality of the product.
“We tend to make long term relationships with suppliers – if we share the same aspirations as the suppliers, we’ll get into bed together. This is borne out by the fact that most of the suppliers that we deal with today, we were dealing with twenty years ago.”
Stewart says that ASD Lighting is aiming to produce a consistent growth of fifteen percent home and abroad over the coming twelve months, and this is something that he’s clearly confident of achieving. “We have more sales people who are actively bringing in more business, so we believe that we will reach that figure. Our main challenge going forward is to remain prepared for change in terms of products. For example, architects may want something that we don’t manufacture and we have to listen to that we keep an ear to the market and respond to it. My only fear would be if we ever stopped paying care and attention to the marketplace. As a manufacturer I know that we can do whatever is required to fulfil our needs.”