Beacon of the Lighting Industry Reveals His Secret to Success
2019 is Ian Robinson’s 50th year working for Beacon Lighting.
When asked about the secret to the success of the Beacon Lighting empire Ian said: “It takes a while, and some are slower learners than others, but eventually you learn to delegate as you get a larger number of people around you. When you realise you can’t open three stores every day at 9 o’clock you realise that you need to delegate, build teams and have people responsible for doing other things for you.
“It’s really teamwork, empowerment, ownership that really make a big difference to a business. We are lucky that we have teams of 6-12 per store, and departments that are small teams, that when you combine them all up you have a pretty successful business.”
Dedication to a single company for over 50 years isn’t something that many people achieve in their working career. However, for Ian Robinson it runs in the family.
Growing up in the south-eastern Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh, Ian Robinson’s first learnt about business, professional management and life via his father. “He certainly had a big effect on my view of what life was about,” Ian said.
Mr Robinson (Senior) worked at Metalex for over 50 years only interrupted for a few years during World War Two when he served his country. Ian observed his father’s trajectory of starting as a clerk and working his way up to be a commercial manager.
Metalex was an aluminium and brass extrusion business. A young Ian Robinson would have many conversations with his father growing up where he learned about what was happening in the emerging South East Asian region where Metalex exported Australian goods. “At that time for business to export to South East Asia, Malaysia and Singapore, was quite something and fairly unique. He exposed us to what was happening in South East Asia and that’s been a big part of Beacon Lighting” Ian said.
Growing up Ian was witness to his father’s community involvement in Rotary, Junior Chamber of Commerce, Oakleigh Cricket Club and other local groups.
Starting out in his career Ian worked in hospitality as an assistant manager at the age of 18 at the Sheraton Hotel on Spring Street, Melbourne where he learned what customers expect and how to serve them best.
It was fairly challenging for a young man, working 60-70 hours a week for 2 years, managing two weddings on a Saturday and managing a team of 65 or so staff. Realising this was not his life’s calling he packed up his life and moved to Queensland.
After his move to Queensland to look for further work in hospitality, Ian came back to Melbourne and got a job at National Trustees as a clerk looking after people’s estates and share portfolios. At this job it was where Ian was first exposed to the share market. Personally, Ian had a lucky break and traded shares and made money from the resources boom of that period (1971). It was enough to get some seed money to set him up for life.
In the coming years he sold half his shares after he thought that the share market wasn’t sustainable, and thought it was a good idea to get involved in a small business and eventually buy shares of that business. He applied for a role at the first Beacon Lighting as a shop assistant and as they say the rest in history. Within 5 years, Ian made an offer to purchase the business which at that stage was just the Prahran store. It suited the owner at this stage because he really wasn’t interested in retail and was interested in wholesale lighting instead.
Within a couple of years, a Just Jeans store opened diagonally across from Beacon Lighting and Ian was envious of what Craig Kimberley had. Being able to see the sales of the previous day, see what was selling and what wasn’t he thought that was the way he could grow his business. Ian started to consider how to scale the business up to into a larger chain.
“The second store I started up in partnership with Bruce Thomas who was my business partner and we started up in Frankston. From there on it was a progression of reinvesting in the business and building stores as our capability grew,” Ian continued.
“We found partners in all the new stores. We continued to grow the business and start an importing program and started small manufacturing until the early 80’s.”
“We stopped that when the market shifted with larger players. The market was originally controlled by larger manufactures and they set the retail price and we would discount off that for the general public and the trade.”
“Most manufacturing started to close around that period. The market moved to an importer base as most of the factories started to have labour issues. The transition moved more to an importer base.”
“We started to import from Europe but then started to move across to Asia.”
Harking back to the days of learning about South East Asia Ian commented “The exposure to South East Asia and the opportunity that came from the region has been a big opportunity for us through imports.
“Being a larger importer helped us to become a more successful business as we were self-supplied and vertically integrated was a big part of our success.”
Ian has mastered delegation and empowerment. Today there are over a thousand Beacon Lighting team members across 110 stores. Asked how he learned about what was required to grow such a significant business Ian spoke of an association with Monash University and overseas studies tours to the USA to study modern American retail. “It opened my eyes up to retail opportunities. I realised I needed to have cookie cutter approach to stamp out the stores and make a chain. I also realised after about two years how important the culture of the business was. All the big American businesses had a very strong culture of team within the organisation and that was the most important thing about how to build the culture within the organisation. I learned a lot from the retailers and in a group with people who aren’t necessarily competitors but in the same industry.”
Looking to future growth plans Ian commented “We need to be considering where retail is going and what’s required. The growth today is more online than physical stores. The online sector is the major engine of growth. We look at the major potential of growth. Which brings the question how many more stores do you need?”
Beacon has invested heavily in its online presence. “Online you need to embrace to be an omnichannel so customers have different ways to purchase your products. Rent is a major cost for business, personal sales on the floor are more expensive [than online] but good retailers will continue to be successful.”
Ian estimates that over 40% of Beacon’s customers research the category or product online. “Which means the experience of buying in store is quite important. It’s expensive because you need good merchandising and great staff excited to sell the product.”
Beacon Lighting is just one of the businesses in the group. There is also Beacon Lighting International exporting into China, North America and Europe; Beacon Energy Solutions which does large scale solar installations in retail, large format and industrial applications; and they also have the GE licence for light globes and street lighting in Australia and New Zealand.
There is one other business in the group. “Much to my horror I’m back in manufacturing. Having purchased a small manufacturing business called Masson which has been in operation since the 1950’s.” Masson for Light makes bespoke lighting products for architectural and commercial applications.
When considering his 50-year career I asked Ian about his biggest successes and failures.
“Biggest success has been listing the company and setting it up for the future. We are planning for the future a business that can continue on. Being a public company has a discipline to it.
“The most challenging time was the recession that was felt more in Victoria than the other states, in 1989 when the property crash hit hard. We had to shut three stores. So, we went from 13 back to 10 stores.
According to Ian the future is bright. “We are on the cusp, in the lighting industry, of the most exciting period that we have ever seen. We’ve seen a whole lot of technology, with energy saving pushing a lot of the change. We are now getting into smart lighting and smart technology; people are talking about smart cities and smart buildings. Well we are just really at the forefront of smart building applications that are coming through and the smart homes. So, you’ll see that in lighting products and a lot of home appliance products as well.
Beacon is investing heavily to stay at the forefront of lighting innovation. Each year the company develops 600 new lines. “Innovation will be in everything we do – all our light fittings need to be addressable with smart technology in them. Change will be faster than anyone expects. The future will be connect-ability and smart lighting into people’s houses.”
Ian moved from CEO in 2013 to Executive Director and then became Executive Chairman in 2014. His son Glen took over as the new CEO. Considering Glen’s father and grandfather both worked in the same business for 50 years Ian might not be the last Robinson to achieve the feat. Ian said “This is my 50th year at Beacon Lighting, it’s good to see that two generations have achieved that, and I believe that my son, who is the CEO, also will probably achieve 50 years at Beacon Lighting. Glen is approaching 40 and he started working in his teens so he’s well over 20 years.”
Ian Robinson is a founding member of the Large Format Retail Association (LFRA) and was President for almost 14 years. He remains a Director of the LFRA with Glen Robinson as Ian’s Alternate Director on the Board.
Ian was a recipient of the 2016 Warwick Shedden Memorial Trophy and most recently the recipient of the 2019 Lighting Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
