Lighting the Way - How Litra is Blazing a Trail in Lighting Products

I spoke with Andrew Siminoff, Vice President of Litra Professional Adventure Lighting the week after Independence Day. He had day-tripped to Idyllwld with family for an innovative laser light show that the city conducts in place of fireworks (lower environmental impact and fire safety concerns. Artsy types live there).   

Andrew is one of the founders of Litra, a professional grade photo and video lighting company that has been around for over 3 years. They are a small team (especially in relation to their revenue) and Andrew works at home. The Litra fulfillment center is in San Bernardino.

Andrew has a background in auto and bicycle and spent some time with a Poway based lighting and bike accessory company before being approached to work on a passion project with long time colleague, Scott Gant. They were helping a POV camera manufacturer develop a lighting compliment to a major product release that would end up as a market standalone.  

After running into some obstacles,the project was abandoned entirely, leaving Andrew and his business partner with intellectual property on ground breaking lighting equipment that was rugged enough for adventure, but powerful enough to light up a studio with a single small LED cube.

Where other lighting companies historically had low product consistency, because of manufacturing challenges, Litra was able to rally investment money to secure their own factory in Shanghai and consistently build a product with the specs they wanted.

Though the camera market overall has constricted, professionals in the industry are undoubtedly enthusiasts. With that enthusiasm, consumers “want to know what’s behind the brand”. One of Andrew’s beliefs is in the importance of brand to enthusiastic consumers, “you can’t steal what the Harley brand represents, even though there are other bikes on the market...” Litra was positioned to tell a compelling story by being able to align with top of the market quality and roots from a beloved video platform.  

Their major coming out party was at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in April of 2017 that hosted more than 150 light vendors (among many other types of wares). Pro photogs were out in full force that year, reported Andrew, noting that people that are serious about the tools they use will bring specialized equipment to test the validity of your product claims. If you are cheating your specs, you’ll be called out on the tradeshow floor...and people talk. The Litra booth wasn’t pretty that year. The banners and collateral were bootstrapped, but the lights were the only thing that really mattered.   

Litra astounded showgoers, receiving rave reviews and praise. In their first month of business they sold 77 units, but after NAB they cleared 1,000 items sold. That’s when they validated that they had something special.         

The next year the company struck more widespread appeal, taking home some hardware in the process. Litra won an innovation award at CES and then Best in Show hardware from the same NAB conference where they had their humble beginnings. Andrew’s reaction to the award announcement was “how did this freaking happen!” and he may or may not have gotten a bit foggy in the eye-ducts.  

They’ve quickly raced to a few million in revenue fueled by strong ambassadorship and word of mouth, all the while keeping the staff sized incredibly small. Andrew intends to find a bit more reprieve for the hard work he’s doing in sales, service, and ops, noting that he’s been woken up at 3am by customers in Europe that have questions. He’s traditionally been available via his mobile phone 24/7 for customers all over the world to offer exceptional service.

It’s the individual stories that continue to surprise and delight Andrew as his business grows. On occasion he’s noticed in behind-the-scenes filming of movies and TV shows that Litra products are being used. It’s a great product for grips on movie sets because they can buy one simple, very mobile light and solve major problems. 

He was particularly delighted to learn that the COPS TV show will sometimes use a LitraTorch to light up the entire inside of a squad car.  

You’re welcome, late night TV binge-watchers.

Looking ahead, the optimism is vast as they move into deeper water and the challenges are presenting themselves with new flavor.  Achieving distribution in different countries is not as easy as you might think. Some countries have long and expensive processes that push in to 5 digits for required certifications. Not to mention import/export tariffs and government level economic propositions that will sometimes impact the way Litra does business.

Things change at the global level!  

Domestically, Amazon both poses threats and offers reseller scale at the same time. Andrew has found that Amazon isn’t always as diligent in protecting their pricing, which puts wholesalers in police-mode. One bad egg that tries to resell Litra products below approved pricing thresholds... and Andrew rightfully gets a dozen frustrated phone calls and emails from sellers that have been an important part of their growth.      

Competitors will always be there and another ‘disruption’ is inevitable, says Andrew, but, as far as the eye can see there is an entire wilderness for Litra to still explore and continue the adventure.