# Strand Lighting, LLC Files for Bankruptcy



## MNicolai (Jul 13, 2022)

Strand Lighting, LLC Files for Bankruptcy​







Strand Lighting, LLC Files for Bankruptcy

Move might be business risk-related and not due to financial distress



inside.lighting






> Move might be business risk-related and not due to financial distress​
> *DALLAS, TEXAS — *Theatrical lighting and controls manufacturer, Strand Lighting, has had numerous owners throughout its 100+ year history. In 2006, the company was purchased by Genlyte Group which eventually morphed into the company we know today as Signify.
> 
> On Monday, Dallas-based Strand Lighting, LLC filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas. But this isn’t a run-of-the-mill manufacturer bankruptcy filing. Let’s break it down:
> ...


----------



## jon.hole (Jul 13, 2022)

More info here: https://www.strandlighting.com/global/about/signify


----------



## rsmentele (Jul 13, 2022)

Sad to see this.


----------



## Van (Jul 13, 2022)

We've been chatting about this today. Interesting things going on.


----------



## MNicolai (Jul 13, 2022)

rsmentele said:


> Sad to see this.


There's not much to see other than a brand name retiring. Effectively this bankruptcy is deferring risk from numerous asbestos-related personal injury lawsuits, though it's certainly possible the consolidation was already planned earlier on knowing that Vari-Lite has a stronger brand reputation these days than Strand. The liabilities likely evaporates with the bankruptcy as essentially the remnants of Strand Lighting LLC would have minimal assets and are effectively judgment-proof from their creditors. Meanwhile the Strand legacy gets folded into Vari-Lite.

So instead of Strand's product catalog disappearing off the face of the earth, they are instead preventing mesothelioma victims from collecting on any potential awards from those lawsuits.

Strong, Altman, Mole-Richardson, so-on have been caught up in similar suits. Essentially if someone gets mesothelioma, the attorneys look back at their work history and flag any employers, contractors, or product vendors that may have provided asbestos exposure and then they name 20-30 companies as defendants in a single lawsuit. They cast a giant litigation net and see what they can catch. One of the same suits Strand is named in also names everyone from Signify to Honeywell, Briggs & Stratton, Strong, and various other entities that provided different construction materials with asbestos like insulation for piping.


----------



## danTt (Jul 13, 2022)

MNicolai said:


> There's not much to see other than a brand name retiring. Effectively this bankruptcy is deferring risk from numerous asbestos-related personal injury lawsuits, though it's certainly possible the consolidation was already planned earlier on knowing that Vari-Lite has a stronger brand reputation these days than Strand.



Does it though? I don't know anyone going out of their way to use anything VL has made since the 3500. I guess it has ten years more decent reputation than Strand, but it's certainly not a flagship brand anymore.


----------



## FMEng (Jul 13, 2022)

I have yet to see any tech product manufacturer get swallowed up by a conglomerate and continue to be successful long term. The bigger the fish, the faster the fish food comes out the tail end. I guess it makes the investors happy, but it never makes the customers happy. Without happy customers, there is no long term future for the company.

I bought a pile of Strand products in the 1990s, based on their long term reputation. A couple of years later, I couldn't buy parts for anything. You'd never convince me to buy Strand again without a dramatic change in the company.


----------



## techieman33 (Jul 14, 2022)

We have a couple of their LED Leko's coming in to demo tomorrow. The rep told us that everything he's been told and seen is that it's business as usual there with no plans to make any changes to the product line anytime soon. This move is just about dumping any potential liability and generally restructuring the company to make things simpler to run.


----------



## Van (Jul 15, 2022)

this week we had a shoot out between some ETC and Strand products the strand S4 equivalent apparently blew away the ETC. Color, Consistency and Beam, Next day, they announced this. Glad to hear it's really a restructuring. Odd that a Judge allowed them to Chapt 7 instead of 11 if this really does boil down to a 'Restructuring' because of Liability but I'm no Lawyer.


----------



## MNicolai (Jul 15, 2022)

Van said:


> this week we had a shoot out between some ETC and Strand products the strand S4 equivalent apparently blew away the ETC. Color, Consistency and Beam, Next day, they announced this. Glad to hear it's really a restructuring. Odd that a Judge allowed them to Chapt 7 instead of 11 if this really does boil down to a 'Restructuring' because of Liability but I'm no Lawyer.


Not a bankruptcy expert by any means, but I'm going to take a guess this was in the works for long enough that Chapter 11 wasn't necessary for the purpose of protecting their assets. The IP was already part of Signify to my knowledge. The "Strand Lighting LLC" business entity may not have had much under its actual umbrella in the first place and if they move the assets around early enough before they declare then it's possibly legal -- or legal_ish_ depending on how a judge sees it.

I understand that they also just _filed_ for bankruptcy. A judge has likely not reviewed their case yet.

Doesn't speak highly of our corporate systems though that this kind of preemptive maneuvering is possible before those asbestos suits reach a judgement.


----------



## danTt (Jul 15, 2022)

Van said:


> this week we had a shoot out between some ETC and Strand products the strand S4 equivalent apparently blew away the ETC. Color, Consistency and Beam, Next day, they announced this. Glad to hear it's really a restructuring. Odd that a Judge allowed them to Chapt 7 instead of 11 if this really does boil down to a 'Restructuring' because of Liability but I'm no Lawyer.


I'd be curious to know what specific products you were comparing, as well as more details about the construction quality and long term reliability of the strand fixtures.


----------



## ScottT (Jul 15, 2022)

The word that keeps coming up to me when thinking about this is _undignified_.

This is a very undignified end to a company (and brand) who was part of many tectonic shifts and changes to the lighting industry.


----------



## techieman33 (Jul 15, 2022)

MNicolai said:


> Not a bankruptcy expert by any means, but I'm going to take a guess this was in the works for long enough that Chapter 11 wasn't necessary for the purpose of protecting their assets. The IP was already part of Signify to my knowledge. The "Strand Lighting LLC" business entity may not have had much under its actual umbrella in the first place and if they move the assets around early enough before they declare then it's possibly legal -- or legal_ish_ depending on how a judge sees it.
> 
> I understand that they also just _filed_ for bankruptcy. A judge has likely not reviewed their case yet.
> 
> Doesn't speak highly of our corporate systems though that this kind of preemptive maneuvering is possible before those asbestos suits reach a judgement.


Looks like their claimed revenues have been dropping off for a while. Not sure how much of that was planned and how much was because of the pandemic though. These numbers were copied from the Reddit thread so I can’t speak for their accuracy.

“21M in revenue in 2020, 7.5M in 2021, 2.9M YTD. 21 outstanding court cases that all look to be related to asbestos. 527k in assets, 113k in liabilities.”


----------



## techieman33 (Jul 15, 2022)

danTt said:


> I'd be curious to know what specific products you were comparing, as well as more details about the construction quality and long term reliability of the strand fixtures.


 I just spent a couple hours with a Leko FC. My overall impression is meh. There is some weird color shift when the color is set to various whites. The left and right 10-15% is very noticeably warmer than the rest of the beam. That problem went away with any colors though. Could be result of the 14* barrel. Not really sure.
I found the 4 channel mode to be pretty worthless in a theatrical setting. It just gives you open white, 20 predefined colors, 20 more that be set on the fixture by the user and strobe.
The 16 channel CMY mode struggled to make some colors manually, and the color picker on our AVO was just plain awful, nothing was even close.
The 18 channel mode where it has control of each individual LED color looked much nicer with the color picker and manually tuning things.
As far as build quality goes. I think the light engine is fine. I’m not a fan of the plastic gate assembly. There are a couple of degrees of play between it and the light engine. The barrel rotation was very rough. Maybe someone with Selecon SPX experience can speak to how normal that is. Since the gate and lenses are taken straight from that line. It’s not enough to be a problem now. But enough to make me wonder what it will feel like in a few years. The barrels were also plastic and had the same rough feeling when moving the lens. We also got a zoom barrel. It didn’t survive shipping though. One of the plastic brackets that hold one of the lenses broke in shipping. Overall I think it would hold up ok in an install situation where people took care of it. But I wouldn’t want to have them on a tour or in a situation where people were hard on them.
We’re supposed to have a Phoenix, Ovation, and Lustr 2 coming in to demo so I’ll be curious to see how they compare.


----------



## MNicolai (Jul 15, 2022)

@techieman33 

Those are in the filings I attached in the original post here. Which is probably a combination of Covid and simply diverting where those invoices and purchase orders are coming from so they start coming from Signify or VL instead of from Strand.


----------



## Ford (Jul 19, 2022)

techieman33 said:


> We’re supposed to have a Phoenix, Ovation, and Lustr 2 coming in to demo so I’ll be curious to see how they compare.


Keep us posted. Which ovation? E910 or Reve E3?


----------



## macsound (Jul 19, 2022)

I've been a fan of Vari-lite for a long time. Mostly because their old gear just keeps working and is more predictable model to model than most other brands.
Honestly the merger with Phillips/Signify makes me incredibly worried to the point that I haven't even considered any of the newer stuff. Big companies who don't know what entertainment products are have this model de-jour mentality, making everything disposable. Not something I want to worry I'm getting involved in. 
Honestly I with VL could spin themselves out and be a real company again. Even their instagram and website are a complete mess, totally missing the point of what people are looking for on those platforms.


----------



## techieman33 (Jul 20, 2022)

Ford said:


> Keep us posted. Which ovation? E910 or Reve E3?


I think it’s an E910. A coworker booked the demos and whoever he’s getting it from didn’t have any of the Reve E3s available to demo.


----------



## John Palmer (Jul 20, 2022)

techieman33 said:


> I think it’s an E910. A coworker booked the demos and whoever he’s getting it from didn’t have any of the Reve E3s available to demo.


The Reve E3 is phenomenal. I had a demo of it last year and was really impressed. I highly recommend not making a purchase choice without comparing it.


----------



## bharrell (Jul 20, 2022)

techieman33 said:


> I just spent a couple hours with a Leko FC. My overall impression is meh. There is some weird color shift when the color is set to various whites. The left and right 10-15% is very noticeably warmer than the rest of the beam. That problem went away with any colors though. Could be result of the 14* barrel. Not really sure.
> I found the 4 channel mode to be pretty worthless in a theatrical setting. It just gives you open white, 20 predefined colors, 20 more that be set on the fixture by the user and strobe.
> The 16 channel CMY mode struggled to make some colors manually, and the color picker on our AVO was just plain awful, nothing was even close.
> The 18 channel mode where it has control of each individual LED color looked much nicer with the color picker and manually tuning things.
> ...


We have seen a lot of variation on the quality of the fixture's demo based upon the accuracy of the fixture library of the console. We have done demos on our Strand consoles and have not seen the color shifts that you are mentioning. Not sure where that is coming from. Could be a control issue. Could be from something else. We also have EOS showfile with fixtures that we built that should present the fixture well. Sounds like the fixture had an SPX lens tube. The new Profile Lens Tubes (PLTs) have 20% more output and are the preferred fixed focus lens tubes moving forward.


----------



## derekleffew (Jul 23, 2022)

MNicolai said:


> ... Effectively this bankruptcy is deferring risk from numerous asbestos-related personal injury lawsuits, ...


So Strand Lighting LLC is taking this drastic step because Century Lighting used asbestos in its fixtures until the mid-1970s? I'm not sure I buy it. I wonder if Altman and Mole-Richardson (others still in existence?) are scared also?

One, perhaps only, example:

STEVETERRY said:


> Err....not quite. New York stagehand Barbara Bercu passed away about 10 years ago [~2005] of mesothelioma. Prior to her death, she sued a number of manufacturers and rental shops, alleging that her illness was due to asbestos exposure from fixtures and asbestos borders. The suit was settled after her death.
> 
> ST


----------



## JakeRhodesTech (Jul 23, 2022)

derekleffew said:


> So Strand Lighting LLC is taking this drastic step because Century Lighting used asbestos in its fixtures until the mid-1970s? I'm not sure I buy it. I wonder if Altman and Mole-Richardson (others still in existence?) are scared also?


Hey, Altman representative here. We are definitely not worried. While we are facing a few asbestos lawsuits, the worst thing they do is take time away from us selling and producing fixtures. It’s very hard to prove in court that our cables 50 years ago gave someone cancer considering walls, curtains, pipes, etc. were all made of asbestos as well back in the day. Not even taking into consideration of the numerous packs of cigarettes everyone smoked on the job in theatres as well. If it really was an issue, all the people who worked in our factory cutting and producing the cables would all have mesothelioma which is 0 cases.

We’re not going anywhere.


----------



## gafftaper (Jul 24, 2022)

John Palmer said:


> The Reve E3 is phenomenal. I had a demo of it last year and was really impressed. I highly recommend not making a purchase choice without comparing it.


I completely agree. I saw a shootout comparing the Reve 3 to multiple other products. It costs a bit more than the E910 but the REVE 3 is far ahead of the competition.

@techieman33 you need to demo a Reve 3.


----------



## gafftaper (Jul 24, 2022)

I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge @bharrell . Strand has been through a lot in the last 15 years or so. There has been a hurricane of craziness at the corporate level. In the middle of that storm everyone knows that Bobby Harrell is still working hard to make things better for customers. There are a lot of cheap jokes and criticism about Strand. But your hard work and commitment to customers can never be questioned. Thank you.


----------

