Christie Lites

Source: Energy Digital

Date :8/5/2007 3:00:47 PM

Former musician Huntly Christie has built his stage lighting business Christie Lites into one of Canada’s largest, with nine locations across North America and more on the way.

Written and produced by James Buchanan & Kevin Patey

What do you do when the band breaks up?

If you are Huntly Christie, founder and CEO of Christie Lites, you don’t go looking for an insurance industry job. Rather you look at the skills you have learned and use those to develop a niche business that keeps you in the game.

Christie is the namesake for his company Christie Lites, which he founded in Toronto in 1985 after realizing that perhaps his dream of being a successful drummer may not have been in the cards.

However, as with many musicians working the club circuit, Christie spent probably more time packing, unpacking and setting up the band’s lighting and sound equipment for each gig than he did playing drums. From this experience of handling the myriad production details that go into playing a show, Christie took the skills he had developed and set his sights on the stage lighting industry.

From his dad’s small garage, in 1985, the 25 year-old Christie launched what he says was the only company in the Toronto area dedicated exclusively to stage lighting.

Maintaining such a narrow focus on one aspect of the stage production market, says the company’s website, facilitated the company’s growth to the point that, within 13 years Christie Lites became one of Canada’s largest stage lighting companies.

Today, Christie Lites focuses on rentals and production for theater, concert, tradeshow, TV & film, industrial, and special event productions.

The company’s tradeshow and industrial work is primarily for companies seeking creative and innovative ways to highlight products. Theater productions the company has worked on include Hair, Cats, Man of Lamancha, and Jesus Christ Superstar.

Concerts the company has supplied lighting for include The Goo Goo Dolls, Barenaked Ladies, Norah Jones, and Sarah McLachlan, among others.

TV and film work includes Deal or No Deal Canada, the Juno Awards, Catwoman and All That Glitters. Special events include Rolling Thunder, Youth Talent Search, The Royal Conservatory, the King Tut Exhibit, and the National Gallery of Canada.

“Our target clients are lighting designers,” says Christie.

“Essentially, we are a trade operating in a wholesale environment.

Attracting new business is a function of a number of things including doing excellent work — this leads to repeat business, developing relationships with lighting designers, and spending time on the road getting to know production staff.

“Our industry is very relationship driven. Mutual trust between a client and vendor supplant the use of written contracts, even on very large productions,” he says.

When thinking of Christie Lites within the context of a large production, the company provides the tools and expertise required by the lighting designer, which is the person that creates the vision for the lighting, to act on the designs for each show.

“Our skill lies in our ability to implement the creative design work of others,” says Christie. “It is the lighting designer who takes all the credit for the creative outcome of the project, but we work very closely with the lighting designers to deliver the results they are looking for when staging the show.”

Asked how a show is designed, Christie goes on to say, “A production will typically hire a lighting designer to design the lighting for a show. The lighting designer is basically the lighting architect, and he or she creates a technical blueprint that lays out the entire show and denotes the lighting hardware required.

“Our staff takes the blueprint and breaks it down to base level components so that we can come up with the best way to package and transport the gear,” Christie says. “The goal is to put together something that will travel and set up efficiently. We make a ‘system’

out of the design. Christie Lites will typically send supervisory staff with the show to ensure that the system is put together properly.”

To say the least, on-time delivery of the equipment — which can be rather fragile — not only requires efficient processes, but being able to cover a large geographic area, given the nomadic nature of most productions — especially musical productions — as long gone are the days when a band simply set its amps up and played.

To this end, Christie Lites has nine locations throughout North America:

Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Ottawa, Vancouver, Dallas, Orlando (where Christie now lives), and Seattle.

According to the company’s website, one of the reasons why Christie Lites has managed to grow as it has is due to the multi-office network of stage lighting shops it operates.

Many shops provide wide geographical coverage, but consistency between each location is critical. Integrating uniformity throughout the organization has led the company to offer ubiquitous technical support and product offerings at each location.

Further, as a production travels from one venue or location, the company ensures it has dedicated rental representatives to handle the customer’s needs.

“The locations are independent in many ways, but definitely work together plenty of times,” says Christie. “Each warehouse is more of a distribution center with its own operations and shop staff, but the management of the company is centralized and oversees all the locations.”

He adds, “The locations do operate independently, but there is equipment sharing when it makes sense to do so.”

Christie is also a very big believer in focus, and is constantly seeking ways to simplify the company, tighten its operations and innovate.

“The number one thing that makes us unique — at least unique in our industry — is our dedication to remaining focused,” says Christie.

“Focus has helped us hone our services, skills, business processes, and efficiencies. We certainly don’t do everything when it comes to stage lighting, but what we do do, we do very well.”

He goes on to say, “We may have diversified markets, but there is nothing diversified about our product line and services. Our focus is our strength and my job is to keep that discipline alive and well.”

Strong partnerships with its suppliers is also essential to the company’s ability to succeed. These relationships are where the rubber meets the road in terms of ensuring the quality, service and value of the company’s work.

However, having good products alone does not build strength. According to the company, Christie Lites is known for regularly attracting and retaining established industry personnel with decades of lighting experience. Further, the company places great importance on building a strong work environment by offering specific programs to support the growth of its field technicians, rental representatives, operations managers and warehouse staff.

Looking to the future, Christie says the company will continue to focus on what it does best.

“New locations, in and of themselves, do not ensure growth; but they play a strong supporting role,” he says. “Local representation is key for building certain relationships and providing high levels of service.

We will definitely be rolling out new locations in the coming years, the first of which will likely be Las Vegas. Our account representatives are also a key element in the company’s growth and we continue to add strong talent in this area.”