New store in Winter Park sheds light on bulb needs

Those were some of the first customers of Light Bulbs Unlimited, an offbeat store that opened on Fair­banks Avenue in downtown Winter Park this month. The shop carries about 2,000 light bulbs, from the sculpted neon tubing to colored floodlights and ener­gy-saving bulbs that go by the brand name of, what else, Earth Light.

Avron Satill, manager and part-owner, says he will special-order anything he doesn't have in stock.

"The interesting thing about this business is we meet a need," he said.

That need, unlikely as it may sound, has been estab­lished by the success of 19 other Light Bulbs Unlimit­ed stores that have opened nationwide in the past decade, including five in Florida.

Ron Fabian, a partner in all of the Florida stores, es­timates those stores will sell $2.5 million worth of light bulbs this year. At established stores, he said, sales average about $600,000 a year.

The business started as a single store in Houston and expanded to other cities in Texas and Southern California. Fabian, a friend of the founder, opened the first Florida store in 1986 and then bought the rights to other markets outside Texas and the West Coast. He has expanded the chain through limited partnerships.

Satill, his partner in Central Florida, expects to open additional stores in the area, possibly as early as next year.

Among Fabian's biggest customers at his stores in South Florida are boat owners who need special lights for navigation and other uses. He also has a customer who needs unusual light bulbs for his business - he's an ostrich breeder - that he can't find elsewhere.

In Central Florida, another young company already has built a sizable business in the light bulb trade since it opened in 1990. All States Lighting Inc., on Sil­ver Star Road in Orlando, serves mostly commercial customers, such as restaurants, retailers and medical centers.

"We have 6,000 square feet of nothing but light bulbs," said Tom Griffin, a vice president and general manager at the store. All States' sales are expected to approach $3 million this year, he said.

All States' track record with commercial users could limit that line of business for Light Bulbs Unlimited. And one has to wonder if anybody could sell enough light bulbs to carry the costs of running a store in what Satill admits is a high-rent neighborhood.

On the flip side, Satill says the store, at New York Avenue and Fairbanks, is very visible and has lured some of the more curious passers-by.

Having the right real estate at the right price is criti­cal for specialty retailers who go after such narrow niches, said Cynthia Cohen Turk, president of Market­place 2000, a retail consulting company in Coral Gables.

But Turk said the light bulb idea could work. These are products people buy regardless of the season or how the economy is doing, she said.

The trick, she said, is to establish a reputation for the kind of service and expertise people want when they have a particular need.

"Specialization has proven to be a very viable con­cept," she said. "Consumers today want more informa­tion; they want wider selection. It's a question of figur­ing out the niche and creating the right formula."