Page 106 - enLIGHTenment January 2016

Retail spotlight

no products to o er customers, Hunt, Adams, and
Sherer knew they possessed something of value.

“We basically had one room with 3 desks, a tele-
phone, and some manufacturer catalogs,” Adams

says. “But what we had to o er the Atlanta market
was an educated sta with 20 to 30 years of light-

ing experience.”

They didn’t give up. “Starting over is not the same
as growing a brand; there was no money,” Hunt

explains. Any investors that Georgia Lighting had
suddenly le when the Home Depot deal soured.

“We all put whatever we had – cash, 401K money,

home equity – into starting up our new business,”
he recounts. A generous Georgia Lighting custom-

er bought the building that Georgia Lighting had
been operating out of and leased it back to them

at a good rate.

And there was more good news. Hunt received
two phone calls the day a er the news broke about

the demise of Georgia Lighting: one was from
Rick Seidman of Quoizel, and the other was Tony

Davidson of Kichler. Both o ered encouragement
Masterpiece Lighting is located just a few doors down from where Adams,
and generous terms in the name of friendship and
Sherer, and Hunt worked for decades at Georgia Lighting.
respect. “They stood by us, and I’ll never forget it,”

Hunt a rms.
Hunt even received genuine condolences on

the closing of Georgia Lighting from a former

competitor. “He told me, ‘I never considered you
a competitor; you were the standard.’ That really

meant something to me,” he recalls.

GettinG started

With the encouragement of some key vendors, the
trio of Georgia Lighting veterans rolled up their

sleeves and began building a business from scratch
with no displays and no products. They worked

incredibly long hours every day of the week, and

their own family members helped pitch in. “My wife
was entering the orders by hand,” Hunt recounts.

The name “Masterpiece Lighting” was an idea
from an ad agency as a reference to the renowned

art gallery next door (a building Masterpiece Light-

ing now occupies a er the gallery’s owner retired
several years ago).

In January 2005, Masterpiece Lighting opened
its doors and by the end of that month was advertis-

ing its rst sale. Two months later, the new company

One of the distinctions that make Masterpiece stand out from the crowd was served with legal papers from Home Depot.
What followed was an unpleasant year of trying to
is the ability to repair or customize vintage lighting. Mr. Lee has a long
history in lighting restoration going back to his World Import days.
grow a business while undergoing repeated audits
conducted by a orneys representing the home

104 enLIGHTenment Magazine | January 2016
www.enlightenmentmag.com