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COMPANY 411<br />
P R O J E C T I O N L I G H T S & S TA G I N G N E W S<br />
Chauvet Opens New<br />
State-Of-The-Art Facility<br />
Company Expands,<br />
Looks to the Future<br />
By Kevin M. Mitchell<br />
Albert and Berenice Chauvet<br />
Starting around 2007, Albert Chauvet<br />
would take time out of his busy day to<br />
go visit empty warehouses. His lighting<br />
<strong>com</strong>pany had grown exponentially over the<br />
years and was now bursting at the seams, taking<br />
up four separate buildings. The success he<br />
and his wife Berenice had experienced since<br />
opening their doors in 1990 had reached a<br />
breaking point. The <strong>com</strong>pany was busting at<br />
the seams with 40,000 square feet and separate<br />
buildings all adding up to logistical challenges.<br />
Yet in reviewing property, nothing<br />
seemed like the right fit, and certainly didn’t<br />
make sense on paper. “The older buildings<br />
I saw needed so much retro-fitting it didn’t<br />
A New Home Base<br />
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Today, visitors are impressed. The<br />
75,000-square-foot facility is built for maximizing<br />
their workflow, research and development,<br />
and efficiency. Based in Sunrise, Fla.,<br />
their new home features a warehouse that allows<br />
for faster shipping, reducing turnaround<br />
for their customers. And they have room to<br />
grow, which they are fully intent on doing.<br />
“We’ve implemented green technology<br />
in the building,” says Albert Chauvet, the <strong>com</strong>pany’s<br />
CEO. “There are skylights throughout<br />
the building.” Sensors, adding just the right<br />
amount of electric light with the sunlight<br />
monitor the skylights. A solar energy system<br />
captures energy, and that, too, reduces electricity<br />
needs. Add to that list paperless accounting<br />
and HR systems and it all results in<br />
serious energy savings.<br />
The <strong>com</strong>pany’s R&D department hums<br />
with nine people and is now 10 times as<br />
large as before. The new location also features<br />
a large room for product testing.<br />
A temperature control room is part<br />
of a strict quality control process that reviews<br />
“nearly every shipment from every<br />
container,” and it all has to meet a standard<br />
“We’re definitely pushing energy<br />
efficiency in all our products.”<br />
—Albert Chauvet<br />
make financial sense,” he says. So they made<br />
the <strong>com</strong>mitment to create something from<br />
the ground up that would fit their unique<br />
needs. And their imaginations ran wild.<br />
before leaving the facility. The shipping<br />
process is software-driven, and robotic<br />
machines get orders out the door faster<br />
than ever. Even the aisles are made so they<br />
are just big enough for the forklifts to get<br />
through, but not much bigger.<br />
Chauvet has expanded its marketing<br />
department as well — in fact, they’ve<br />
added a total of 27 associates since the<br />
opening of the facility, bringing the total<br />
number of people working there to 85.<br />
“We have wonderful and talented people<br />
in every division, which allows me to look<br />
for more business,” Chauvet says, noting<br />
particular efforts to ramp up efforts to<br />
serve the professional market.<br />
The <strong>com</strong>mitment to energy efficiency is evident throughout Chauvet’s 75,000-square-foot facility, including the warehouse.<br />
New Horizons<br />
plsn<br />
Now that the dust has settled, Albert<br />
Chauvet is pleased with the decision to<br />
create a custom HQ, where “we have the<br />
space to organize our business into different<br />
sections.” The <strong>com</strong>pany has a team<br />
that oversees the club/DJ market, another<br />
for the professional market, and a separate<br />
sister <strong>com</strong>pany, Iluminarc, focused on architectural<br />
lighting products. They all have<br />
one thing in <strong>com</strong>mon: “We’re definitely<br />
pushing energy efficiency in all our products.”<br />
As for Chauvet himself, “I’m still the<br />
visionary working on the over-all strategy<br />
for the <strong>com</strong>pany.” Some of that includes<br />
thinking globally: Their next step will be to<br />
launch Chauvet Europe later this year. “We<br />
will continue to grow in professional lighting<br />
or related market segments that we<br />
can step in and offer a value proposition,<br />
and the next big part of our growth will be<br />
the international market.”<br />
The move itself was a “back breaker,<br />
but we got it done!” he laughs. “Now we’re<br />
stronger than ever, and we’ll keep pushing<br />
the envelop with green technology and<br />
attending to our core business.”<br />
So do the Chauvets get big plushy offices?<br />
“It’s a little better than before,” he<br />
laughs. “But here, the bigger we get, the<br />
more humble we get — that’s a big part of<br />
our culture.”<br />
32 <strong>PLSN</strong> JUNE 2011
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