Australian export case study  Planet Lighting designs in the new underground Metro in Dubai | Walk into the new underground Metro in Dubai, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the Bank of China in Beijing, the Convention Centre in Hong Kong, or the Berkeley Public Library in California, and you will see the work of Planet Lighting, one of the world’s leading makers of site specific lighting fixtures and lighting glassware.
For over forty years, this Bellingen-based company has been supplying custom-made lighting sculptures to international designers, architects, and heritage consultants.
Today, more than seventy per cent of Planet Lighting’s production is exported, and the list of successful completed projects in key public spaces around the world continues to grow.
Current projects include an LED lighting feature for the London 2012 Olympic Games.
The family-owned Planet Lighting began over a hundred years ago when CEO Brett Iggulden’s grandfather began making specially designed builders’ tools. Some of these tools are still manufactured by the company today; the original fibro cement sheet cutter, for example, still sells in the thousands every month at Australia’s largest hardware chain. Move into glass The company’s move into glass happened gradually. Brett’s father, Bill Iggulden, was one of Australia’s leading industrial designers, and in 1959 he designed the Planet Studio Lamp, which was way ahead of its time.
The success of this product led Planet Lighting to do business with a glass producer, and eventually this supplier became part of the company.
We had always been involved in design,” says Brett Iggulden, “and our move into glass was a natural progression, as was our move into custom design.
“We have a very well-equipped factory – we can turn out just about anything. Designers and architects from all over the world started coming to us asking for very specific large lighting pieces to fill large public spaces in landmark buildings.
“Often, they had had trouble getting things made exactly the way they wanted. A lot of designs were in the ‘too hard’ basket.”
Brett Iggulden recounts the story that when the famous U.S. architect I.M. Pei designed the Bank of China in Beijing, he knew that Planet Lighting could produce exactly what he had in mind because he had worked them and their Hong Kong distributor previously on the Bank of China building in Hong Kong.
“So he simply gave us sketches of what he wanted, and it turned out very well indeed.” Lighting industry has changed Brett Iggulden reflects that the lighting industry has changed enormously over the past few years.
“Our main export now, and into the future, is lighting made from ‘light emitting diodes’ – better known as LED,” he explains.
“In fact, the special lighting feature we are working on for the London Olympics is an LED fixture.”
The company started been working with this technology early on and has incorporated LED into their bespoke lighting fixtures since 2002.
“The new energy efficient LED technologies are an extremely important part of our production and we export these products on a daily basis,” Brett Iggulden notes. A serious look at exporting Planet Lighting began to take a serious look at exporting about fifteen years ago.
At that time, Brett Iggulden says that the Austrade-administered Australian Government Export Market Development Grant (EMDG) scheme made a big difference in how the company handled their international marketing push.
“EMDG was a huge help to us when we first started exporting. It allowed us the freedom to explore markets worldwide.”
The company has since received a number of EMDG grants over the past decade or so under the scheme.
“We’ve come a long way from making builders’ tools,” says Brett Iggulden. “It has been – and continues to be – a fascinating journey.” |