NCEC in the News!
Scott Richardson: Light Defines Form
Researched and written by Tai Caldwell
The most striking thing about Scott Richardson’s workspace in Greensboro’s Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship is the light. Daylight pours in through three floor-to-high ceiling, north-facing windows, casting a cool blue tone on the hardwood floors. Overhead hang small, high-intensity bulbs for those evenings when Richardson outworks the sun. The light and space in the room feels intentional, professionally designed. And it was—by Richardson himself.
Richardson is an architectural lighting designer and the owner of the consulting firm Light Defines Form. He works in collaboration with architects to create interior and exterior lighting for buildings. It is an artistic venture for him, working to compose space and finding ways to use lighting to accentuate the architectural features of the building. “I try to make the space connect to the people,” he says.
After graduating from UNCG, Richardson attended graduate school at New York City’s Parsons The New School of Design, where he studied architectural lighting. From there, he transitioned into a job at a NYC architectural lighting design firm where he built his reputation, his portfolio, and his contacts list. Soon, he decided it was time to set out on his own. Explaining that large, out-of-state firms in places like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco do most work in his field, Richardson says he felt the North Carolina market was “ripe to be tapped.” He could perform the same professional-grade work as the big firms but for a lower cost and with a more personal touch. With this in mind, he made the move back home and established his company.
When he moved towards incorporation, Richardson looked to the large firms as models for how he would run his business. After his time with the company in New York, he had a sense of how to work with clients and manage multiple projects; he designed Light Defines Form to operate the same way on a smaller scale. He points out that he works with architects, not what he calls “end users”--the owners of the building or property in question--which tends to streamline his efforts and allows him to work on several projects at once.
One boon for Richardson was that he had worked with clients in the Southeast during his time in New York City. He maintained these relationships; therefore, when he moved to North Carolina, he had an instant client base on which to draw—mainly in places like Charlotte and Raleigh. He was able to offer them his services for smaller projects, ones these architectural firms may or may not have contracted out to larger lighting companies. “I was able to take some of the work that was smaller projects that they weren’t hiring out for, but they still saw a need for,” Richardson explains. Once he had set himself up as a professional architectural lighting designer, it was only a matter of setting up Light Defines Form as a legal entity. This was more of a challenge, he says. “I started to acquaint myself with what being a business owner meant versus what just being a designer meant.”
Fortunately, he was not alone in this. He explored other consulting firms at the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship to conceptualize a model for his business plan, something the NCE requires in writing before they will consider bringing someone into their Greensboro-based business incubator. He also spent time with an accountant and lawyer who specialize in start-up enterprises, constructing a plan based on all the information he had learned since relocating as well as his experiences in New York: “As an artist, or as a designer, those aren’t my areas of expertise, so I really have to rely on professional services to bridge that gap.” There is no reason to reinvent the wheel, he says. Many accountants and lawyers concentrate on entrepreneurship, and years of experience have shown them what works and what does not work when establishing a company. Also, as an associate of the Nussbaum Center, Richardson has had access to all the mentoring resources provided therein. He credits their help in learning to maintain quality and establish a sustainable customer base.
Richardson’s initial goal in setting up Light Defines Form was simply to find how to create his work his own way, but his business has evolved and grown beyond this goal over the past six years. Now, he sees sustainable growth as a business priority. He works hard to keep his firm growing while at the same time not outgrowing its capabilities. For Richardson, the quality of the work is vital. While he currently outsources to part-time drafts-people and the like as needed, in the future he hopes to bring on more designers and be set up as a major player in the greater Southeastern market. That said, he does enjoy his one-man company and the ability it affords him to have a say in everything, unlike larger firms. “Having a small part in each project lets me focus on the quality.”Light Defines Form has, Richardson admits, seen less growth than he originally anticipated--but the growth he has seen has been of higher value, which evens the scales. “I’m focusing more on quality and larger-scale projects than I thought would originally be available to someone in this market,” he explains. One reason for this is the push over the past several years towards “green building”: designing sustainable, low energy-consumption new structures and revamping old buildings with clean technologies to reduce their carbon footprints. One place this is most evident in daily life is the recent popularity of compact fluorescent light bulbs--yes, light. “The public awareness of the need for sustainability has had a big impact [on the company]” Richardson notes. Light Defines Form is a member of the US Green Building Council and has also been involved with several Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) projects. Constructing green buildings requires architects to farm out different elements of design to specialty firms such as LDF because they cannot just “do it any old way like they used to,” Richardson says. “I think that there is now a recognized need to do things the right way as opposed to just the easiest way. It’s going to be better for everybody in the long-term.”
Richardson has faced obstacles over the years as he and his company have grown and developed. He points to financing and marketing as two of the greatest problems he has tackled and says he needed help to get past some of those bumps. The Nussbaum Center’s mentoring program and GTCC’s Small Business Center were two assets he indicates helped him through. “There’s a very good likelihood we would have flamed out after the third year” without the NCE in particular. “They have been instrumental in making a sustainable kind of practice.” He recommends the Nussbaum Center, and business incubators in general, to potential entrepreneurs. Whether or not a person seeks out an incubator, Richardson advises, “you really have to find resources beyond yourself” to survive as a small business.
As for his college experience, Richardson claims it prepared him “only marginally” for where he is today. He learned his craft well and there was--particularly in graduate school--an emphasis on professional practice, “but I wouldn’t say that was geared towards entrepreneurship.” The pervasive attitude was that students would move on to work for sizeable firms in large cities, not that they would strike out on their own in regions like the Piedmont Triad. As an artist-entrepreneur, he had to learn a great deal through experience
Richardson doesn’t complain, however; college was where he had a chance to focus on the design side of his trade. He advises future architectural lighting designers to do the same and to have a portfolio and good credentials before setting out into the business on one’s own. “Thinking entrepreneurially about what you do is good from the start, but you also need to get a really solid background, make those contacts, and build up your credibility. Those are the keys to selling any kind of professional service.”
The outlook for architectural lighting design as a career is bright owing in large part to the sustainability movement. “There’s a real need for expertise in lighting, both electric and day lighting,” Richardson says, pointing to the increase in demand he has seen from architects. There are few companies that do what he does in the region, and he believes there is certainly room for more design firms like Light Defines Form. To that end, he recommends UNCG offer courses that bring art and business into the same classroom, “melding those two sides of our brains together,” as well as bringing together artists and businesspeople with common goals. But no matter what, he says, the art must always come first. “If you’re in an arts business, you’re in a qualitative business. All the business acumen in the world won’t put you where you need to be if you don’t have that quality.”