Ellis Yan often says, “My competition is 6 feet underground: Thomas Edison.”
He is challenged to convince consumers to buy his company’s energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamp products instead of traditional incandescent bulbs. The president and CEO of Aurora-based Technical Consumer Products Inc. says energy-savvy homeowners are catching on to this trend: Compact fluorescent lamp use climbed from 2.3 percent of the bulb market in 1999 to 5.6 percent this year.
TCP, with 117 employees at its headquarters and 7,000 at its manufacturing location near Shanghai, China, has increased its sales more than fivefold since 2000 to $115 million in 2005 and claims 40 percent of the compact fluorescent lamp market.
Founded in 1986, the company originally developed, manufactured and imported different types of lighting sources. After it was formally incorporated in 1993, Yan began to focus on the compact fluorescent lighting market and the company grew as an original equipment manufacturer to major U.S. companies.
Significant changes for TCP began to happen in 1996, when it introduced a compact fluorescent lamp with a twisted tube design. The following year, it developed a dimming ballast. These two technologies offered huge application benefits to the industry.
This kind of innovation continues today with the company’s recent release of the GU24 base, a breakthrough in lighting technology that makes it easier to use energy-efficient light fixtures in commercial and residential applications.
TCP works with customers to develop new items to suit their needs, and its latest catalog contains more than 1,000 energy-efficient lighting items for the residential, hospitality, assisted living, commercial/industrial, institutional, retail and restaurant industries.
To keep up with the growing demand for new products, TCP added 36 employees in 2005, a 43 percent increase over the previous year’s work force. Yan recently purchased 20 acres one block from the current facility and began construction on a new, more efficient facility that will accommodate future growth.
The new 125,000-square-foot facility will be able to handle double the current work force and inventory, and there’s no doubt the new building will use compact fluorescent lamps to light the way for its employees.
HOW TO REACH: Technical Consumer Products Inc., (330) 995-6111 or www.tcpi.com
