Justice Design Group is a major player in the ceramic lighting fixture industry and has roots dating back many decades as a family-run business. It was originally started in 1960 by President Brandon Levin’s grandfather as a ceramic giftware and kitchenware manufacturing company in the same 75,000-square-foot facility in Compton, CA that it still occupies. After a couple of decades of success, that company, named Treasure Craft, saw profits being eroded by international competition. With Brandon’s father now at the helm, the family decided to sell off that original business.
The family retained ownership of the Compton facility, as the new owners moved manufacturing to Mexico, and eventually to China. Levin’s father began doing consulting work for Justice Design Group, then a small lighting fixture company that was outsourcing their ceramics work at the time. He saw the possibilities of using his ceramics skills and experience, along with the unused factory, as a great opportunity, and bought out Justice Design Group. He was even able to re-hire some of the displaced workers from the old Treasure Craft company. Today, younger generations of earlier workers, as well as friends of workers with the specific skills required for creating and finishing ceramic products, help keep the staff stable and long-term. Most receive training on the job, as there are few opportunities to learn the necessary skills, such as glazing and painting, in other domestic manufacturing work.
Eventually, Brandon came aboard, and with his youthful ambition and enthusiasm, guided the company to further expansion of its product line and market, including an import supply chain of additional materials to supplement their domestic production of ceramic fixtures.
Sustained Family-Run Growth
Levin has now been with the company for 22 years and has been quite successful in managing Justice Design Group’s continued growth. Employing about fifty people, the business designs and manufactures all its ceramic fixtures, designs fixtures of other materials, and assembles about half of what it imports from overseas in its Compton facility. The bulk of the imported products come from China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand, with some higher-end fixtures from European countries.
Justice does not sell directly to end users, but rather to retailers who sell to consumers through stores or e-commerce, or electrical distributors who handle commercial customers. About two-thirds of production meets the needs of residential customers, with the remaining third going to commercial users. The company maintains a network of sales representatives throughout the United States and Canada to handle distribution.
Domestic Flexibility for Client Customization
“There are not a lot of decorative lighting companies that remain in the United States, that are manufacturing their product here,” says Levin. “The strategic advantage that we have of being a domestic manufacturer allows us to offer designs and flexibility that we otherwise couldn’t, and allows us to handle the needs of customers in a much quicker manner. If you’re an importer, and somebody wants something changed, or there’s an issue with a product, or whatever it is, it could be twelve to fourteen weeks in production and on a boat from China or Southeast Asia. In our case, it’s something we can resolve, or there’s a custom product that we can offer to a customer based on our in-house solutions.”
The ability to easily customize products to meet the specific needs of clients, particularly for high-end and commercial users, provides Justice Design Group a definite competitive benefit over lighting distributors who must depend on overseas manufacturing for their products. The fact that they offer a huge choice of variations on their made-to-order designs makes them an attractive choice for creating the individual look a customer may be seeking.
Room to Grow, Challenges and All
From raw clay powder to plaster, to paints, to electrical components, the company has a need for a variety of materials for its manufacturing operations, and Levin says they keep a good-sized inventory of those raw goods to avoid any disruptions to their ability to deliver finished products. Supplies are generally stable, but there were some difficulties for certain electrical items during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prices have stabilized from some spikes in those times of shortages, with the biggest upward cost pressure coming from rising labor costs.
Looking forward, Levin says, “With our product manager, as well as the freelance designers that we’ve been working with, we’ve been introducing a lot more products that are more sensitive to the trends of the day for lighting. Those new product introductions, coupled with aggressive strategies with the showrooms that we sell to, with e-commerce distributors that we sell to, and probably most importantly, with the growth opportunities for us in that one-third of the business that’s the commercial side, we have a lot of legs to grow.”
That expansion and growth means hiring additional staff, as well as continuing to add new equipment. Fortunately, the large building that the company occupies still leaves room for future expansion. Business is good, and as Levin says, “We’re getting close to our capacity. We have three kilns, and we’re basically firing them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so we will need new kilns to help us with that increased demand.” With those solid, well-controlled growth plans, the coming years should continue to be “bright” for Justice Design Group.