Flipping the Switch: How We Started and Scaled a Global Lighting Brand

By Cole Zucker and Guillaume Vidal

Successful entrepreneurship is not a straight line. It's a thrilling, unpredictable roller coaster full of extreme ups and downs.

Flipping the Switch

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
• Release date: Jul 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781544544021

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copyright © 2023 cole zucker and guillaume vidal

All rights reserved.

flipping the switch

How We Started and Scaled a Global Lighting Brand

First Edition

isbn

978-1-5445-4404-5 Hardcover

isbn

978-1-5445-4403-8 Paperback

isbn

978-1-5445-4402-1 Ebook

isbn

978-1-5445-4405-2 Audiobook

Contents

Preface

A Chance Meeting

Tracking Opportunity

Seeing the Market Firsthand

Quitting

Confirming Our Suspicions

Developing My Competitive Advantage

My Time of Discovery

Subcontracting and Setting Up Shop

In San Francisco It Was Hustle or Die

All the Little Details

All the Noes Before a Yes

Always in Lean Mode

Getting to the End User and Our First Big Sale

Learning the Market on the Move

Our First Distributor

Meeting the Market

Building a Sales Team

Managing on the China Side

The First Big Sale and the Momentum That Followed

New Products

Lessons in Hiring

Logistics for an International Company

Validation from the Outside

Our First Major Supply Chain Issue

New Distributors, New Customers, and a New Direction

Going Premium

Sticking to the Vision and Doubling the Team

A New Office and Finding Our Categories

Finding the Right Partners and People

What Comes with Growth

It Was Time to Sell

An End and a Beginning

What You Can’t Prepare For

Final Note to the Reader

Preface

Entrepreneurship is one heck of a ride. Just thinking about walking away from a steady salary to explore the great unknown can make your hands feel sweaty. And the first few years can be especially tough as you are met with waves of rejection and struggle to find product/market fit.

And for those, like us, who were bootstrapped, watching your personal bank account decline month after month is a gut-wrenching experience. It’s hard to not look at yourself in the mirror each morning and question your decision.

But then there’s the other side—after you’ve recognized the market opportunity, after you’ve put in countless hours for no pay, and after you’ve finally capitalized on what began as a seed of an idea. The payoff can be truly life-altering.

In talking with many entrepreneurs, we’ve found that our journeys are strikingly similar. One consistent theme that many entrepreneurs experience is learning through failure. Whether it’s making the wrong strategic decision or a bad hire, or mismanaging your cash flow, there are countless lessons to learn.

We’ve made more mistakes than we care to admit, but it’s how we bounced back and avoided repeating those mistakes that made us successful.

In sharing our story, we hope not only to inspire but to help other entrepreneurs navigate the complex and challenging world of starting and scaling a business.

We started our company with limited capital, knowledge, and experience. But we committed ourselves to giving everything we could to it. And now we can proudly say that we founded and scaled a global LED (light emitting diode) lighting brand in GREEN CREATIVE.

So buckle up, grab a cup of coffee (or a stiff drink), and get ready to learn from our mistakes, our successes, and everything in between. Because if we can do it, so can you!

A Chance Meeting

Cole

We met at a Mexican restaurant in China.

When I first saw Guillaume, all I could focus on was the goofy sweater this French guy wore. It was this Steve Jobs–esque black turtleneck. The neckline almost hit his chin.

Must be a French thing, I thought.

When the group wrapped up dinner, the night was still young, and we all headed to a club. I settled onto a bar stool. I ordered and was waiting on my drink when someone came up and pushed me from behind. Without hesitation, Guillaume jumped off his stool, grabbed the guy, and pushed him back.

I like this guy, I remember thinking. He barely knew me, but he literally had my back.

We spoke for the remainder of the night, and, as we chatted, we realized we had quite a bit in common. We were both peripherally involved in the lighting industry, and we both had cars, which was rare among foreigners in Shanghai.

Unfortunately, this commonality wasn’t notable enough for us to stay in touch. While we exchanged numbers, we quickly moved on, caught up in the momentum of life—girlfriends, work, and the day-to-day. Our initial spark faded into a fond memory. I assumed Guillaume had left China. Shanghai was transient by nature. Our mutual friend who’d connected us had left six months previously, so it would’ve been no surprise if Guillaume had followed suit.

I’d come to China to start a business that I could bring home to the US. The seeds of this idea were planted at a young age. When I was growing up, my grandfather frequently reminded me of China’s coming importance on the global scale, citing how it had recently joined the World Trade Organization. The 2000s will be considered the Chinese Century, he’d say. It will be defined by China’s modernization and domination of the planet.

His advice: learn Mandarin and get to China.

But China was far from the suburbs of New Jersey, and I was in no hurry to leave the comforts of home. Even when it was time to go to college, I chose a school just an hour away so I could still visit family.

But even with this proximity to home, college opened my eyes and ignited a desire to travel, explore, and see what the world had to offer. My first opportunity to travel was in my junior year. As a business major, I was encouraged to study for a semester abroad. While the rest of my classmates debated the options, I knew where I’d go.

It was 2003 when I landed in Beijing for the first time. The city was getting prepared for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Construction was everywhere. For three months, I interned at a local real estate developer and interacted as much as possible with the locals. By the time I returned to the US, I’d learned enough Mandarin to greet someone and ask them where I could find the nearest bathroom. While it wasn’t quite enough to start a multilingual international company, more important than greetings and toilet-based queries was the commitment I made to return. My grandfather was right. China was the land of opportunity, and I could feel it.

In 2006, a year after graduating college, I landed a job on Wall Street at a large financial services corporation. There were no ties to China, but the salary was terrific, and I could see myself moving up the management track. It was the beginning of a safe, secure, lucrative future. It was every college graduate’s dream. But it wasn’t mine.

Days spent entering data into Excel models and validating numbers didn’t do much for me. There was no adventure, no ownership in the work, and no joy. I hated the job, and it hated me back. Soon enough, I got the boot.

Reluctantly, I began, once again, the interview process, but nothing spoke to me. All the jobs looked the same—row after row of cubicles and desks and monitors and people who seemed bored out of their skulls. It wasn’t the life I wanted. I began to realize that, up until that point, I’d let fear dictate my path. I was dissatisfied, and it was time to listen to a different voice. I could hear one. I had no idea if it was one of insanity or bravery or heart, but I knew I had to at least give my dream a shot.

So I bought a one-way ticket, sold almost everything I owned, stuffed the rest into a couple of duffle bags, and headed to Shanghai. I had no job lined up and little savings. All I had was a belief in myself that I could make something work.

I found a job as a sales agent, working for a building materials manufacturer in Shanghai. I spent my days traveling to large construction projects across China, calling on contractors and end users to get them to purchase our products. However, my real purpose for moving to China was to do something entrepreneurial. I began to develop some ideas on the side.

I tried to create advertising magazines, which were essentially coupon books, but that didn’t work out. I tried to make eye drops that cooled one’s eyes, but when I finally found a manufacturer, they informed me it was already in every Rite Aid around the US, manufactured through a global Japanese brand. Next, I turned my focus to alternative construction materials. The plan was to sell magnesium panels to builders. A friend with a pillow business had attended a conference and returned with $2 million in orders. Inspired by his success and an I can do it too attitude, I flew to Frankfurt, Germany, for a construction conference. I hit the showroom floor with the confidence that my future was in that room. Unfortunately, my high hopes were soon dashed. I wandered the convention floor, handing out product flyers to people who spoke no English and, if they had, likely wouldn’t have wanted to speak with me.

The failed attempts hit hard. My boss had the money and nice cars I lacked. I felt like beyond the material aspects, there was little that separated us. I had the appetite for risk, the determination, and the work ethic, but a piece was still missing. Then, one day, I found it.

It was a particularly bad Wednesday. From six in the morning on, I struggled to keep up. By five o’clock, I’d made seven sales calls and had many more to do by the end of the week.

The drive home wasn’t any better. It was a stop-and-go crawl. Rush hour in 2010 Shanghai was no joke. To my misfortune, I’d had no choice but to grow accustomed to it in the three years since I’d arrived. It was a problem that had no immediate solution. City planners had underestimated the number of people who’d have cars. Parking was even more of a nightmare. I arrived home and circled the block around my apartment building for what felt like an eternity.

Finally, I found a spot and trudged to my building, through the lobby, and into the elevator. With a slight lurch, it began its long journey to the 23rd floor.

The doors slid open. Rest was within reach. I’d survived another day, and as I opened the door to my 800-square-foot apartment and flopped down on the couch, the TV flashed to life and there was Guillaume eating a waffle. It was the French guy with the goofy sweater.

I hadn’t seen him in months, but there he was on my TV, in an interview with a local news station.

Had my exhaustion finally caught up to me?

Was it really him?

Why was he eating a waffle?

Had fate finally intervened?

While fate hadn’t intervened for the waffle shop (it was a PR stunt, and Guillaume’s friend owned the franchise), it might have intervened for me.

I’d never watched the local news, and I’d set the TV to the Philippines cable network—the nearest English-speaking programming. My butt had done the work of turning on the TV for me. Maybe this would be a good day after all.

I sprang off the sofa, grabbed my phone, and sent him a text that would change the course of our lives.

Tracking Opportunity

Guillaume

Hey, Guillaume! I just saw you on TV. Crazy. What are you up to these days?

I responded almost immediately. The timing was perfect. Come 2010, I was two years into working as a product manager at a factory that manufactured lighting. My boss was incredible and so were my colleagues. The only problem was that I’d reached the limit of my growth. Customers and friends kept telling me I should start my own business. It was time to search for a new way forward. The signs were there, and my entrepreneurial spirit was at an all-time high. So when Cole reached out, I wondered if the universe had finally found a way to reach me.

We quickly set a meeting, and in a matter of days, we were swapping stories over whiskey and green tea at the neon-lit and heavily chandeliered 88 Club in Shanghai. It didn’t take long before I realized that there was a mutual opportunity between us. The meeting seemed to hold weight. I could almost feel it; my life was about to change in a big way. We simply clicked. We were both tired of working for others and were ready to set out on our own. The only caveat was that Cole wanted to move back to the US and I wanted to stay in China. But a solution immediately presented itself. We wondered if this, too, could play to our advantage. If Cole could be successful in sales in China, I had no doubt he could be even more successful in his home country. Perhaps we had a winning partnership on our hands. We had, quite literally, arrived from opposite sides of the world, but our visions seemed perfectly aligned.

Becoming business partners wasn’t something we decided to do over a single drink. There wasn’t one moment where we said, Yes, let’s start a business together. It was more of a natural progression.

We shared similar perspectives on life. We both saw China as a country of entrepreneurs. It was a culture that resonated with us. We understood the importance of taking risks and were willing to mess up and try again. This made us different from most people. We could’ve stayed comfortable—in the New York finance world or the French countryside—but instead we seized the opportunity to travel, pursue new ideas, and learn a new language. That willingness to take risks, to step outside our comfort zones, was what created the circumstances for us to even meet in the first place.

We explored the ways we might work together, and as we did, our complementary skills continued to become more apparent. But our compatibility went beyond our skillsets. We lived similar lifestyles. Neither of us had kids or a family, so we weren’t goaded by the need for a serious salary, nor were