Page 20 - Lighting Magazine July 2018

in MEMoriaM
18 enLIGHTenment Magazine | july 2018 www.enlightenmentmag.com
Remembering Ira Phillips
BY LINDA LONGO
My rst job in journalism was covering the kitchen and bath industry for a trade magazine, where I’d a end trade shows and meet the “suits” at huge corporations such as Dupont, Formica, MASCO, Sharp, Wilsonart, and many others.
None of the top executives were particularly memorable to me, as they seemed cut from the same cloth. Then I entered the lighting industry in 1994 and was introduced to its largest and most in uential companies such as Quoizel, Kichler, Sea Gull, Feiss, Fredrick Ramond, ELK, and Crystorama — and surpris- ingly, these weren’t public companies, but private ones run by families. I will never forget the warm welcome I received from each of them, especially by the Phillips family at Quoizel.
Many of our readers have either grown up in the industry or have been involved in lighting as their rst career and therefore do not realize just how special the decorative lighting industry is as a whole. It is lled with caring and nurturing families who
are as passionate about the product category as they are about the people within it.
While it might seem trite to say, “Ira Phillips was one in a million,” it is also undeniably true. I’ve heard newcomers to the industry incorrectly assume that Ira founded Quoizel — that’s how closely associated he was to the company’s brand and how successful he was at elevating the name to the consumer consciousness. In actuality, Ira started his career as a diamond salesman, followed by ve years learning the lighting business at Lightolier before he was hired away by the executives at Quoizel to head up their sales and merchandising e orts back in 1964. His sales success there was so great that he was rewarded with a partnership interest in the company within months of start- ing. Over time, he bought out his partners and took the helm. What many in the industry might not know is that Ira was also a philanthropist, who believed in giving back by supporting the arts as well as the Israel Tennis Center Foundation.