Bright Future in Fiber Optics

COSTA MESA —  The idea was pretty simple. Take the fiber-optic lighting used in beer signs and modify it to provide underwater illumination for swimming pools.

The execution, though, was tough. What was supposed to be a three-month research-and-development effort turned into a 14-year marathon of 12-hour workdays, pork-and-bean dinners and overextended credit cards.

In the end, the company that John Robbins first envisioned never did much in the pool market.

Instead, his Lumenyte International Corp. has created a new lighting industry niche--taking fiber optics out of the novelty stores and into the functional world, with major architectural, military, artistic and industrial uses.

The Costa Mesa company’s products illuminate ammunition rooms on Navy ships, emergency vehicle warning lights, corporate signs atop towering high-rises, commercial offices, museum showcases and even a few residential powder rooms.

“It is a very impressive company,” says Mary Poppendieck, director of light fiber technology for 3M Corp., which recently invested in Lumenyte and licensed a number of its technologies.

High praise, and hard-won.

Just five years ago, Lumenyte was on the verge of collapse. Its top officers worked for 10 months without pay in 1992 to keep the business afloat--living on savings, credit cards and loans from family members. Twice, the company that Robbins started in 1981 laid off most of its workers because there was no cash coming in.

Lumenyte’s rebound is a classic example of how the right combination of entrepreneurs with an idea, investors with vision and business-minded corporate managers can push a dream to the verge of success.

“If ever there were a textbook case, this would be it,” says Debra Esparza, a small-business management specialist at the entrepreneur program at USC.

“What is really amazing in this case is that they had the staying power to last through all the problems,” Esparza said. She gives high marks to Robbins, who turned the company presidency over to professional executives, leaving himself free to do product research and development. Robbins is chairman of the company, though--a post he assumed this year.

Lumenyte’s $10 million in annual sales make it a very small player in the $20-billion international lighting market. But the company holds patents and licenses for most of the manufacturing processes that make its lighting systems unique, giving it tremendous growth potential, industry insiders say.

The company has developed a much thicker single-strand cable that can deliver far more light than the hair-thin strands of plastic commonly used in fiber-optic systems. The difference is much like spraying water through a high-pressure hose rather than a hollow hypodermic needle.

Fiber optics works by providing an optical medium that will enable light to travel long distances without weakening.

The concept was first patented in 1880 by an inventor who devised a method of “piping” light from a central source to several outlets through a system of pipes lined with reflective material. It was the development of continuous lengths of light-transmitting glass and plastic that made fiber optics commercially viable by the 1970s.

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Robbins was a Chatsworth swimming pool and spa contractor when he started experimenting with fiber-optic lighting in 1980 as a way to eliminate the electrocution risks inherent in using traditional hard-wired fixtures for underwater lighting.

Because the fibers don’t carry an electrical charge, the light source can be placed far from the water.

The twisted strand fibers didn’t carry enough light to do the job, but Robbins thought he had found the answer in 1983 when a pool lighting representative from General Electric dropped by with a piece of large optical cable.

Robbins says the cable still didn’t have enough illumination to satisfy his needs, but he believed that the core could be improved. He acquired the patent and asked James Zarian, a plastics manufacturer with a doctorate in polymer chemistry, to help refine the formula.

“I said I thought it would take about three months,” Zarian recalls with a shake of his head. “Boy, was I wrong. It was three years to get the first batch.”

The company’s initial sales came in 1985, but Lumenyte’s pool system was more expensive than the competition’s, and the company couldn’t generate revenue.

“By 1988 we were completely out of money,” said Robbins, who turned for help to his father-in-law, retired business lawyer Sandy Willford.

Willford agreed to help with some money and advice because, he said, “I could see the potential.” The advisor soon became the company’s biggest shareholder as well as its chairman and president.

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While his financing kept the company alive from 1988 through 1992, when sales revenue started picking up, his business acumen enabled the struggling firm to become a viable business.

Under Willford, Lumenyte branched into new markets, bolstered its marketing and research staffs and began spreading the word that it had a unique product that the lighting industry needed. The Newport Beach resident retired again this year.

“It was hard to get appointments because it was a new product,” says marketing director Christine Bassett. “But once we were able to get inside and demonstrate, the conference rooms would fill up with lighting designers and architects who were just in awe at the possibilities.”

In a test for the U.S. Navy, Lumenyte has replaced the 153 light bulbs used to illuminate the 20-foot identifying numbers on the nuclear aircraft carrier George Washington with a fiber optic system that uses six 60-watt illuminators.

“We’ve been told that we’re saving them four man-days per week because they don’t have to change the light bulbs anymore,” said Dennis Sitar, Lumenyte’s vice president for major projects and market development.

A sales training room at the company’s offices near John Wayne Airport was recently outfitted with a fiber-optic lighting system. “We replaced 2,400 watts of fluorescent lighting with 360 watts,” says Gregg Whitaker, a former medical plastics company executive hired in 1993 to replace Willford as Lumenyte’s president.

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Numbers like those should help fiber-optic lighting grow tremendously in coming years, said architect Joseph Rey-Barreau, a professor of lighting design at the University of Kentucky and education director for the American Lighting Assn.

It already is a hit in Las Vegas, a big and growing market for Lumenyte as casino owners seize on fiber optics’ ability to light their lavish signs at a fraction of the cost of incandescent systems.

Whitaker and Robbins are pushing that market. Whitaker, who is on a marketing trip to Japan this week, says the company also has signed supplier agreements with several major corporations that will provide steady growth for years to come.

One of those is the 1995 deal with 3M that turned Lumenyte from a struggling research and development firm into a serious player in the lighting industry. In addition to licensing Lumenyte technology to produce lighting systems it now is marketing in Japan, 3M is using the company’s products to help develop fiber lighting for the automotive industry--a market with multibillion-dollar potential.

“There’s a whole lot of new stuff coming down,” Whitaker says with a satisfied smile. “We believe we can easily double our sales every year for a while.”

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Lumenyte International Corp. at a Glance

Headquarters: Costa Mesa

Founded: 1981 by John Robbins

Chairman: John Robbins

President/CEO: Gregg Whitaker

Business: Fiber-optic lighting

Employees: 80

Projected 1997 sales: $10 million

Status: Private

ADVANTAGES OF FIBER-OPTIC LIGHTING

* Safer: Cables contain only reflected light, no electricity. Can be installed safely around pools, underwater and in other applications where fire or excess heat is a concern

* Energy-efficient: Numerous cables can be connected to a single light source

* Easier to install: Cables can be installed in hard-to-reach places where standard electrical wiring would be difficult

* Flexibility of use: As colorful as neon, but without neon’s delicacy and environmental concerns

* Light and compact: Less than half the weight and bulk of regular electrical wiring

APPLICATIONS

Some uses for Lumenyte’s large-core optical fiber lighting system:

* Outdoor signs: No burned-out bulbs atop high buildings; greater flexibility in incorporating company colors and logos

* Display lighting: Generates less ultraviolet light and heat around paintings and other fragile displays

* Casinos: Interiors and special effects

* Emergency vehicles: Lighter and 2 1/2 times brighter than conventional lighting methods; allows for multiple mounting options and greater visibility

* Aboard ship: Lights ladders and ammunition storage chambers on naval destroyers; safer in wet conditions and ensures against spark-induced ammunition explosions; difficult to detect on radar or with infrared detection equipment

* Aircraft interiors: Illuminates aisles and upper bulkhead coves; no heat or electrical impulses to interfere with navigation instruments

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Source: Lumenyte International Corp.; Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times