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 A booming Boston-based lighting firm joins LED technology and digital intelligence. May 2001
"We thought it was dimly possible that there might be a market for this technology," says Mueller, CEO and cofounder of Color Kinetics Inc., the Boston-based designer of full-spectrum digital lighting products. Color Kinetics pairs LED technology with computer intelligence to offer a broad and easily programmable array of effects. Founded by Lys and Mueller in 1997, the firm has expanded to nearly 100 employees in just four years. Revenues for 1999 approached $7 million, and the company expects to have tripled that for 2000. Its client list includes Disney, Sony Loews, Harrods, the Boston Symphony, and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. "But that night, sitting in Ihor's apartment, it no longer appeared just possible, but screamingly obvious. I actually said, 'Oh my God.'" What Mueller and Lys had discovered was an intelligent solid-state lighting technology that produced virtually no heat, used a fraction of the current needed to light standard incandescent bulbs, required practically no maintenance, and, most important, was piloted by a digital system that could offer designers a range of color, effects, and an ease of use that most of them hadn't dared to dream of. Rather than relying on traditional color-generating devices like dimmers, sleeves, and gels, the new system uses red, green, and blue LEDs to create more than 16 million colors and hues. And Mueller and Lys designed their system to run off PC or DMX intelligence instead of costly, complicated circuitry and a jungle of switches and levers. "These are two very down-to-earth guys," says James Mansour, principal of Mansour Design, in New York. A specialist in branded three-dimensional environments, Mansour used the team's products in his design for the Brookstone store in the Venetian Grand Hall, in Las Vegas. Employing their patented Chromacore technology, Mansour created four separate merchandising environments for the store. The equipment also gave Brookstone the fiexibility to change its displays, expanding or exchanging color environments. "They didn't have the attitude that they were going to conquer the world," recalls Mansour, who met Mueller in 1998. "They were focused and specific--and there was an end-user benefit to everything they were doing. We see all sorts of bells and whistles in this business, meet all sorts of people who wave their arms and say how great their products are. With Color Kinetics, it was obvious that they were creating something that had specific commercial applications." Mueller and Lys met in the early 1990s when they were students at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. The R&D for Color Kinetics took place sporadically, during Mueller's weekend visits from Boston to Lys's Pittsburgh apartment while the latter was working on his doctorate in electrical and computer engineering. Later the two worked more concertedly in a fourth-fioor walk-up on Hanover Street in Boston's North End. Today Color Kinetics occupies 40,000 square feet of prime real estate in downtown Boston, as well as a 3,500-square-foot basement beneath their 10 Milk Street offices. Yet despite the spacious 11th-fioor digs, the company maintains the energy of a fiedgling start-up. "For the first year or two the work was just me fiying down to Pittsburgh and sitting behind Ihor's computer," says Mueller, a 30-year-old ponytailed CEO. His employees dress in blue jeans or khakis, wear lab coats with the word wow embroidered across the back, and navigate the office's longest corridors on Razor scooters. "We had a couple of prototypes, and a cot on the fioor. In the North End we had ten people working elbow-to-elbow in a small two-bedroom apartment. But it was exciting. And sometimes I wish we were back there." Color Kinetics' first employee was David Johnson, the company's vice president of finance, who met Mueller in October 1997. Ten years older than his new boss, Johnson had a strong background in running established high-end software companies. "Initially my wife was a little skeptical when I told her I was going to work for a start-up company with no revenues that made fiashing lights, strobes, and color washes," Johnson recalls. "She asked me if I was betting that disco was coming back." One week in 1997 Mueller, Lys, and four interns from the Sloane School of Business at MIT carried backpacks weighing almost 70 pounds onto a commercial fiight that took them to Las Vegas, site of that year's annual Lighting Dimensions International show. The backpacks contained 30 Color Kinetics prototypes, the sum of the company's production until then. "We set up a tent in the midst of all these high-tech booths," Johnson recalls. "At the show we bought some scrap carpet and a laser printer so we could distribute press material." The firm's presentation may have been makeshift, but their research and products were clearly revolutionary. "When people at the show saw what we were doing--this marriage of LED lighting and intelligence--they couldn't contain themselves," Mueller says. "They started ordering product on the spot. We hadn't even determined pricing yet." Color Kinetics won Architectural Lighting Product of the Year at the show. A slew of other awards soon followed, as did commercial orders. "We didn't realize how broad the market was," Johnson says. "When we started showing our technology to designers, it was almost as if they wanted to hug us." One of the first designers to embrace the Color Kinetics product line was Brett Andersen of Focus Lighting, in New York. Andersen came into contact with Mueller by chance in early 1998, when a colleague in Edinburgh, unable to locate Color Kinetics, asked him to forward a fax to them. After a brief phone discussion Mueller sent Andersen some information about his then four-person company. He also sent a sample, which Andersen believed he could integrate into one of his most ambitious projects--the blade sign for the Loews 42nd Street E Walk Theatre. Like most lighting designers Andersen was familiar with LED technology. But most commercial applications used LEDs to create giant bit-map replicas of television screens. Andersen wanted something both more versatile and easier to control, a system that would offer him the broadest possible array of lighting effects. "At best, I thought we'd turn the whole sign red, then blue, perhaps dim it and brighten it," he says. "I never imagined we'd be able to individually dress each pixel, to morph from one color to another by the inch. It gives me the ability to sequence the entire sign." Rich Locklin, associate designer at Lightswitch in Chicago, used Color Kinetics technology in his design for the 40-by-100-foot glass facade at the new Goodman Theater Center annex. Using 196 light fixtures mounted to project onto shades drawn across three fioors of windowpanes, Locklin designed a dynamic illumination system that produces a series of complex effects, including a snakelike form slithering across the facade, a "pong" game, and an American fiag. "We didn't want it to look like Hollywood Squares," says Locklin, who chose Color Kinetics fixtures and intelligence for their low maintenance, compact dimensions, and ease of use. "These products have absolutely increased my range as a designer. There are just so many possibilities. Right now the system is running a fifteen-minute program that plays continuously from sundown to sunrise. But I could write a completely new program in a matter of hours." If there's a drawback in the Color Kinetics product line, it is cost. The Loews 42nd Street blade sign cost nearly $2 million, more than three times what a standard neon sign would cost. But many of the company's clients claim that savings in maintenance and electricity make Color Kinetics more economical. "I've had standard theatrical fixtures in my gallery--and they're a nightmare," says Craig Wetli, senior exhibit designer at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis. Wetli used Color Kinetics lighting products last Thanksgiving to create a summer evening environment around the museum's vintage 1914 Denzel Carousel. "These fixtures are expensive, but they more than make up for the expense in longevity and dependability. And LED's estimated lifespan is 11.7 years of continuous use." In its fourth year of business, Color Kinetics is a very rare bird: a high-tech start-up with both product and revenues. Holder of two patents for its core technology--with several more pending--and fresh from a $13 million venture capital infusion from one year ago, the company seems poised to expand into new territories and markets with 29 international distributors. Last month it opened a subsidiary in Japan. "We don't even know some of the uses for the things we make," Mueller says. "But we've definitely moved the party into our pool. This is the right place--jump right in." |
