‘Extraordinary milestone’

Brett Robinson remembers the night the lights went out in his family’s business — half of the lights, anyway.

The businessman and his colleagues at Robinson Lighting Ltd. were preparing to host a wine and cheese event for interior designers at the Winnipeg company’s Polo Park-area store. A fire broke out behind the building, impacting a transformer and knocking out power to 50 per cent of the showroom.

Guests arrived to find four or five firetrucks on the scene, Robinson recalls, adding firefighters extinguished the blaze in short order.

“It worked out,” he says, chuckling at the memory. “We still carried on and everybody kind of laughed about it.”

More than 25 years later, Brett owns the company along with Leigh Robinson. The brother and sister duo are anticipating things will go more smoothly this fall when they host a gala event for partners and vendors in their showroom to celebrate the company’s 90th anniversary.

It’s an “extraordinary milestone” and an achievement that belongs not only to the Robinson family, Brett says, but also to the employees who have helped build the company and the generations of customers, builders, designers and communities that have placed their trust in it.

In some ways, it seems like just yesterday the company was marking another milestone.

“I remember the 75th (anniversary) going on,” says Brett, 53.

“Ninety just seems bigger,” adds Leigh, 48. “It seems like not many companies reach this level, and it’s kind of cool.”

Headquartered at 995 Milt Stegall Dr., Robinson Lighting specializes in residential and commercial lighting design, consultation and premium fixtures.

In addition to serving customers in Manitoba, the company has a showroom in Minneapolis and two in B.C.: Kelowna and Burnaby (which operates under the name Norburn Lighting & Bath). Robinson Lighting’s 80 employees, 37 of whom work in Winnipeg, also fill online orders from across Canada and the United States.

While the company got its start in 1936, the Robinson family’s history with illumination starts 85 years before that.

Brett and Leigh’s great-great-grandfather, Thomas Robinson, ventured into the lighting industry as a candle maker in Montreal around 1850.

His son, William Wadby (W.W.) Robinson, moved to Winnipeg and established a successful lighting business in 1919 that, according to family lore, was the first to supply pre-wired lighting fixtures across Western Canada.

W.W. died in 1935. His son, B.A. (Burt) Robinson, wound the company down and started his own lighting business, B.A. Robinson Co., on the third floor of the Bedford Building on Market Avenue. The company continued to grow and eventually moved to Sherbrook Street.

Burt’s sons Bruce and Ross took over the company in 1973. They expanded its offerings to include plumbing and heating distribution products.

Eventually, the brothers decided to split the enterprise into two distinct companies. Roughly speaking, Ross took control of the plumbing and heating side and started what is now known as Robinson Supply. Bruce continued to pursue lighting and established what is now Robinson Lighting.

Bruce was heavily involved in the industry as a whole. He served a term as president of the American Lighting Association (ALA), a trade organization that represents designers, manufacturers and retailers across North America, and, in 2003, became the first Canadian inducted into its hall of fame.

Brett and Leigh grew up around Robinson Lighting. As children they had fun riding the conveyor belt in the warehouse, and as teenagers they started working at the company.

In an attempt to ensure Robinson Lighting didn’t monopolize dinnertime conversation in the family’s Charleswood neighbourhood home, Brett and Leigh’s mother, Lynne, instituted a rule they could only talk about business for five minutes each evening.

Some nights the family stuck to that limit; other nights, they explored the topic longer.

“It’s a big part of our life, so we wanted to talk about it,” Brett says. “I bought the house we grew up in, so now I can kind of see us sitting around the table, bantering back and forth about work.”

Brett and Leigh took over the company after Bruce died in 2010.

The lighting industry has changed dramatically over the decades, from traditional fixtures to LED technology, smart lighting systems and design-focused solutions. (The company’s Winnipeg showroom currently has more than 1,800 styles of lighting on display.)

Robinson Lighting has adapted to those changes while maintaining the relationship-focused approach that has been part of the company since the beginning, Leigh says.

One of her favourite parts of running the business is interacting with staff members, who she considers kin. “It’s truly a family business,” she says.

Lighting is often the last thing the average person thinks about when they walk into a space, but it’s one of the key things interior designers consider when working on a project, says Kurt Espersen-Peters, an interior design professor in the University of Manitoba’s faculty of architecture.

“Lighting has an impact,” he says. “If the lighting is not going to be working or functioning properly, you’re not going to have a functioning space.”

Espersen-Peters offers Robinson Lighting kudos for reaching the 90-year milestone. “They must really know what they’re doing to be able to stay in business that long.”

Jon Melchi thinks so. After he joined the ALA last year as president and CEO, Melchi says colleagues identified Robinson Lighting as a company he should familiarize himself with.

In the last 20 years, employees from the company have been involved in nearly 70 ALA committees, Melchi says.

“What that tells me is that they are always willing to share with others in the industry what they’re doing, and equally as important, they’re always willing to learn what others are doing,” he says. “They’re always trying to get better.”

Robinson Lighting pays for each employee to take the ALA’s lighting specialist course, which trains them in all aspects of the residential lighting industry.

“They’ve always found a way to invest in their people,” Melchi says. “They’re representative of the very best in our industry.”

If Brett and Leigh have anything to do with it, Robinson Lighting will shine for years to come.

Brett knocks on the wooden table the siblings are sitting at as he considers the company’s future. “At the 100th (anniversary), we’ll remember this moment right now,” he says.

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca