Lloyd Sevack, President, P. Eng. 
Montreal, Quebec

When my dad Ben Sevack founded Tripar in 1949 (yes, 75 years in business as of 2024!), as a small metal stamping shop, an undiscovered niche was components for the lighting industry.

At the time, this was largely for suspended lighting fixtures, for which there were many local lighting manufacturers, and virtually no offshore competition. Besides decorative metal stampings (such as fonts, bobeches, husks, leaves, cylinders, check rings, and lamp bases… for those that may still have such terms in their vernacular 😉), those same customers had a need for decorative tubular arms and crossbars, for their chandeliers and other popular fixtures. Tripar obliged investing in equipment to process;

• Small diameter ¼” – ½” tubing; cutting, beading, swaging, threading & bending
• Narrow galvanized coil to make crossbars

In the heyday of catering to these decorative lighting OEMs, Tripar made hundreds of thousands of tubular arms and tens of millions of crossbars.

Tubular product manufacturing – the downturn and exit

Fast forward to 2013, tastes changed, and most decorative fixture manufacturing shifted offshore; in part due to labour costs, but mostly because of plating. With plating often using harsh chemicals and tightening North American environmental controls, it pushed local platers either to incur the expense to comply, or to shut down. The result was such that most processing moved offshore…where harsh chemical effluents are still often dumped into water systems…sadly in the name of short-term profits.

This of course led to a reduced demand in Tubular manufacturing and crossbars, which to this day remain a necessary part of almost every suspended fixture, but whose simplicity reduced them to an ultra-low-cost commodity item.

With tubular product manufacturing representing disproportionately low sales in relation to the factory space it was using up, the choice was either to invest in modern, efficient and compact equipment (which still left the plating constraint) or get out of this business completely and invest and use the space for the core of Tripar’s expertise; metal stampings.

We choose the latter. However, I didn’t want to let our customers down and leave them in a bind. So I contacted one of our main Tubular product competitors, Contour Metal Products in Ontario, asking them if they’d be interested in taking over our share of the business. The answer was an obvious yes, at which point Tony, then President and owner asked me point blank “how much do you want for your customer list?” I told him nothing. He was shocked to say the least.

You see, my only interest and concern was not to let our customers down. And to ease their transition to a new and competent supplier as we wound this down; see letter here that we sent to all tubular product customers.

Crossbar manufacturing – our exit

The crossbar business was a similar story. Being a commodity item over time, with importer manufacturer’s selling prices often not much more than a nickel, it was time to exit that business too. Like the tubular business, in 2016 I approached David, then President of Etlin-Daniels to ensure a similar smooth customer transition from Tripar to them, and again at no cost to Etlin-Daniels.

So, why didn’t we monetize these business “exits”?

You may be asking yourself, why didn’t I try to monetize these exits? The answer is simple:

I wanted these new suppliers to seamlessly take over the supply of these items for OUR longstanding customers, with true appreciation and grace. In my mind, providing our customer list (limited to these product ranges) would increase the chances that such gratitude would spill over positively to our customers. And it sure did!

But most importantly because we believe all customers should be treated like friends; it’s in our DNA and the only way we do business. And that’s how we’ve managed to build such lasting relationships with our amazing clients (often ranging from 10 to 30 years).

Sincerely,
Lloyd

Lloyd Sevack, President, P. Eng. 
Montreal, Quebec

You know, we spent considerable R&D time developing a product that will never sell in high volume. Here’s why…

We often received customer inquiries that went like this:

Customer: Do you have a plaster frame with a 100mm hole?

Tripar: No, but we have a 3-7/8” stamped hole, as well as 4”.

Customer: That won’t do. I need 100mm.

Tripar: You realize that those sizes we have are either only 1/16” smaller or bigger than 100mm? Surely your luminaire can accommodate for that?

Customer: Yes, but I want 100mm.

And so, we’d laser cut that customer’s 100mm hole at their expense, only for the next week to receive a similar call from that or another customer asking for the same but with a 110mm hole…oh so close to 4-3/8” which we have… but no success.

One flawed solution: “goof rings”

Some lighting OEMs achieve “customizable” plaster frames using “goof rings.”

This is when the customer buys a plaster frame containing the largest hole they envisage, that also contains three to four small rivet holes around the large hole. They also stock a series of reducing (goof) rings; rings with a constant outer diameter but each with smaller holes.

They then rivet the required/desired goof ring to their “universal” plaster frame, effectively reducing the hole size. Well, this is a falsehood! Yes, the plaster frame itself is “universal” but now requires the inventorying (and assembly) of goof rings, with the problem of hole size simply shifting to the goof rings. It’s not a solution at all! And it’s a bit goofy if you ask me.

The problem

Fueled by customer requests, this made me wonder if there is a way for a single plaster frame to accommodate a variety of hole sizes?

And one day as I was using my camera and seeing the aperture leaves in the camera lens, it suddenly hit me. Could this same principle be employed in a plaster frame to offer a variable-sized hole?

Back at work, I shared this problem and idea with my Engineering team, adding that we cannot do this with 16 or more leaves as done with expensive camera lenses, but must do so with much fewer to keep costs reasonable. They stared back at me blankly until one asked; “How are you going to do that?” At which point I looked at everyone around the table and said “I have no idea”, and pointed to one person, and said “You first!”

The solution

The product development process is never a straight line; one idea, development, and often failure leads to others. Slowly two potential solutions emerged. Using only 6 leaves it seemed that we had a concept that could yield hole sizes ranging from 3-1/2” to 5-1/2”. I confidentially shared our concepts with a few of our biggest customers, to get their feedback and comments. After several prototypes, each increasingly refined, we repeated the trials with those same select group of customers, whose feedback was positive.

Attention then shifted to if/how we could offer this at a reasonable price. Unsure of the potential volumes, we could not afford the expense of developing hard tooling (dies) for all components, but did so for the leaves, as their numbers would be higher, requiring 6 per plaster frame.

This allowed us to come out with what we now call The Shutter™ (as well as a much simpler solution for an adjustable square-hole plaster frame); Yup, we did it.

The devil is always in the details; learn more about it on our New Product Bulletin.

Who is the Shutter for?

It’s for three types of OEM luminaire clients:

First, for OEMs developing new products and are unsure which of their luminaire new sizes (and corresponding hole sizes) will take off, it’s ideal. If their demand for any specific hole sizes increases enough, we will offer pricing on that fixed hole size, which is cheaper than the Shutter.

Second, the Shutter is ideal for niche players that don’t have high volumes.

Third, we had one “surprise” application. When showing the Shutter to a few high-volume plaster frame customers, many said “I’m ordering 500 of these.” When we asked why given their volumes, they explained how if they have not predicted their demand for the variety of fixed-hole size plaster frames they require and run out, their entire production would stop and customer orders held up for a part worth a few dollars. So, they’d prefer using the Shutter to keep things moving until their missing plaster frame comes in, only to then backfill their stock of Shutter and always have 500 in reserve.

Lessons learnt

Would I do this again knowing of the R&D investment and low sales volume? Absolutely!

Why? Because it solves a costly problem for our customers, not to mention the wow factor; people who see and play with it are both intrigued and impressed, reinforcing the trusted brand that Tripar has in the OEM lighting industry.

US Pat # 11,085,615