PEOPLE WORTH KNOWING

Lighting Sound America's interview with Marcel Fairbairn

Having previously sold virtually every brand of moving light, Marcel Fairbairn pioneered a new model, creating GearSource, to move used lighting, video, and audio gear online, and LED Source, which sells LED gear. Now GearSource and LED Source will exclusively distribute Coemar products in North America. LSA spoke to Fairbairn about that decision and his unique plans for the businesses.

Lighting&Sound America: Until recently, Coemar was distributed in the U.S. by Inner Circle Distribution. That ended when the company’s owners moved en masse to Martin Professional. You previously sold Coemar, and were an executive and shareholder with the company. How did you end up back with Coemar?

Marcel Fairbairn: It was a funny decision process. I’ve enjoyed not being part of the recent bloodbath in the moving light business. But Fausto [Orsatti, Coemar’s international sales manager] called, asking if I had any ideas about a distributor. My thought was, you can’t make any money setting up a traditional distribution company right now. So I put together a cuttingedge business plan and pitched it to Coemar and their investment group.

LSA: What was the pitch?

MF: We’ve come up with a new, fatfree distribution method using GearSource’s business model, but with a manufacturer. A customer buys Coemar fixtures; the order goes to Coemar in Italy, gets put on a pallet, and is shipped directly to the customer. All the airfreight charges are built into our prices, which, in most cases are ten percent lower than Inner Circle’s were. It’s like Amazon or Zappos.

LSA: How will you service the Coemar products?

MF: Jorge Bombino, who was part of Inner Circle, has set up RoboLite here in South Florida to support Coemar products. We have an exclusive deal with him. We’ve set it up so, when a customer calls, we transfer him to the service department, like any other company; it’s just that our service department is a separate entity.

LSA: What about sales and marketing?

MF: Henry Kones will manage our sales, along with Cynthia Viteri. Both are longtime automated lighting folks, and, of course, I’m in touch with industry people every day. We’ve also hired a dedicated touring and production person to lead that charge for us. That leaves trade shows; we’ll have a Coemar booth at LDI in addition to GearSource and LED Source.

LSA: What’s new with GearSource and LED Source?

MF: GearSource is back in growth mode, but my big focus right now is the franchising of LED Source. We’re finding that a lot of lighting people are tired of what they’re doing, and are looking for a way out of the rat race or into a new market. They’re very excited about owning their own LED Source business. My goal is to have 150 offices in five years or less.

LSA: How does the franchise business work?

MF: We sell two levels of franchises. The AG, or advanced group, consists of people with backgrounds in lighting— maybe they worked for a rep firm or an architectural design firm. The PG, or primary group, can include anyone; we train them in a few weeks to sell retrofit lighting—going into an existing location and replacing existing technologies with LEDs. We have franchises starting as low as $20,000, all in!

LSA: How is it going?

MF: We’ve been covered in USA Today, Palm Beach Post, Chicago Tribune, and SunSentinel. This month, I’m in Entrepreneur magazine. With all of this publicity, we’ve got people we don’t even know coming to us.

LSA: It sounds like a significantly new approach to business in this industry.

MF: The franchise concept was the “wow” moment for me and for our company. I wanted to address the retrofit lighting market, but it’s a market that you need to create. I came to the conclusion that we needed an office in every market. When you need something for the house, you go to Home Depot; I want to do the same thing with LED Source branding. I hired a franchise consultant and top franchise attorney, and have taken on an 18month crash course in the process. We’re in the process of opening four locations in just the next 60 days. I want ten by the end of the year, and 5060 in 2011. Next, we’re going into hypergrowth mode with GearSource as well.

Just watch…

From September 2010 – Lighting&Sound America