Sitler’s Owner and President Jason Prochaska. PHOTO ADAM MOORE
By Chase Castle
chase@corridorbusiness.com
With a passion for LED lighting and a growing list of commercial clients that place a premium on energy efficiency, Sitler’s LED Supplies, of Washington, has earned the title of the Corridor’s Fastest Growing Company for 2017.
Sitler’s LED Supplies serves as a value-added reseller of specialty lighting, offering site evaluations, installations and assessments on top of the company’s extensive inventory. That includes a range of LED [light-emitting diode] products, as well as bulbs and hardware for things like projector lamps, stage lights or even microscopes.
The company’s revenues increased nearly 290 percent between 2014-2016, according to an independent analysis by the accounting firm Honkamp Krueger PC.
The accomplishment happens to come on the company’s 40th anniversary, and four years after it faced an existential crisis. Sales were plummeting in 2013 because the specialty lighting products it had offered for uses in photography, theater and medical facilities over the previous 30 years were becoming obsolete.
“We started to see the effects LEDs could have on the lighting industry,” President and owner Jason Prochaska told the more than 400 attendees of the CBJ’s Fastest Growing Companies awards event on June 7 at The Hotel at Kirkwood Center.
The former accountant then brought on some trusted friends to help Sitler’s pursue the growing opportunities in LEDs.
Mr. Prochaska reeled off an impressive list of benefits associated with LED lighting, from improved safety in warehouses to improved test scores in schools.
“When I start talking about LED lighting and the effect it can have on people, I tend to go on and on and on,” he joked.
Sitler’s Supplies was founded in 1977 by husband and wife Bill and Hazel Sitler. Mr. Prochaska’s father, John, who had worked in the company, acquired the business when the Sitlers retired in 1988. When John Prochaska died in January 2000, Jason Prochaska quit his accounting job, bought the company and picked up where his father left off.
The company now has 14 employees – a modest number, but nearly triple the staff it had a year and a half ago.
Mr. Prochaska said he strives to uphold the customer-first philosophy practiced by the Sitlers and his father. He attributed part of the company’s growth during that period to an investment in employee training.
Sitler’s conducts in-house training sessions and encourages attendance at conventions with other lighting professionals. The latter has helped the company identify consumer trends, particularly as they pertain to energy efficiency. Those conventions, like the ones held by LIGHTFAIR International, also provide networking opportunities with suppliers and insights into new technologies, Mr. Prochaska said.
“Five years ago, if we didn’t learn about what’s coming up in the lighting world, we never would have seen this level of growth,” Mr. Prochaska said. “For lack of a better term, we’d have been left behind. It’s extremely important to stay on top of that.”
Much of the company’s training is self-driven, meaning employees facilitate their own sessions, sometimes in a group using materials provided as part of an online course offered by lighting control companies, for example.
Recently, Mr. Prochaska and six sales staff members traveled to California for four days of sales training specific to energy-efficient lighting. The training sessions not only provided sales tips, but also what he described as a streamlined technique for making important decisions during site evaluations. Those lessons have helped the company create a more qualified sales force, which also requires commitment beyond product knowledge and persuasion, he said.
The company stresses the value of “human-centric lighting,” which calculates the types of lighting best for an environment by accounting for the biological impact of specific color shades, as well as humans’ natural circadian rhythms that determine how much light is needed depending on the time of day.
“We’re lighting geeks, I guess, would be the best description,” Mr. Prochaska said. “It affects everybody in the production area, work houses … the majority of the population, unless you’re a farmer or construction guy, you’re gong to be inside, and our kids are constantly inside, and that lighting is important.”
Another ingredient behind the company’s success has been rebates offered by electric utility providers like Alliant and MidAmerican, whose incentives for commercial and agricultural projects have been leveraged as a way to outbid competitors. Because rebates offered by the utilities often go unclaimed, Sitler’s saw an opportunity: By processing those rebates on behalf of their customers once a project has been completed, the company can highlight the after-rebate prices on those projects upfront.
A customer-centric culture, including an emphasis on follow-ups, has also been instrumental to growing the company’s sales numbers, Mr. Prochaska said. Revisiting jobs with old clients frequently reveals some of the products’ best selling points.
“If that’s what they focus on when they call us back, obviously that’s where we should focus on the first time [around], because that’s what matters to them,” he said.
Because of the company’s emphasis on customer sales assistance, as well as hands-on services such as evaluations, installations and assessments, Mr. Prochaska said expanding into online sales would be a challenge, although it could provide a lucrative opportunity to expand the customer base.
“We want to get in front of the customer,” Mr. Prochaska said. “We want to explain what the best solution is for them, and it’s hard for us to do that [online] … So I really steered away from what I called passive selling. We want to be active in the whole process.”
Dave DeWitte contributed to this report.
