Mark McClear Joins US LED, Plans to Simplify Lighting Controls

Mark McClear has joined US LED as President alongside CEO Ron Farmer. He sees direct sales, turnkey installations and simpler controls as the path to growth.

Mark McClear is back in the lighting industry, and I’m not surprised. I said as much on the Today in Lighting podcast the morning we spoke. Mark has joined US LED as President, working alongside CEO Ron Farmer at the company’s headquarters in Katy, Texas.

Mark admits the move may surprise some people. US LED sells direct with no independent reps, a very different model from the rep-driven world he and I grew up in.

A Relationship Twenty Years in the Making

Mark and Ron first met over dinner about 20 years ago through their involvement in the ASSIST program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “I’ve known Ron for years, and I’ve always admired him and his business,” Mark said. Although Ron wasn’t looking to hire, a few phone conversations led to Mark flying to Katy to meet the team.

What he found was a business model he describes as filling a gap. “It really is a missing piece that none of the big guys want to take on,” he said. US LED carries projects all the way through installation and controls. Even so, Mark said he wasn’t fully sold until he experienced the culture in person. He described an executive team whose members like and care about each other.

How the US LED Turnkey Model Works

US LED is a leader in lighting for self storage facilities. It also serves a long list of what Mark calls under-the-radar national accounts, such as retail chains with thousands of locations. In any given year, several hundred of those stores may go through a refresh. “Very lean and mean,” Mark said of the direct model. “And really close to the customer. I like all of that.”

The process starts with a team calling on corporate headquarters. Local auditors then visit each site to determine what it needs to meet its energy, security and aesthetic goals. Some auditors are US LED employees, while others are subcontractors the company has trusted for decades. Once the customer approves, a crew completes the installation. “The customer doesn’t have to do anything,” Mark explained.

Crews work through the map region by region. Mark described a loop that might run through Missoula, Coeur d’Alene and Portland before heading south toward Shasta. By the end of the year, every store on the list is done.

Why Controls Are the Next Frontier in Lighting

Mark has spent years in controls, and that is where he expects to make his most obvious contribution. “The next thing in lighting is not lighting,” he said. “It’s controls.” In his view, many lighting salespeople, at reps and distributors are wary of controls because they fear the unknown. He places much of the blame on the controls industry itself for making the topic too technical.

His analogy is the automobile. You could discuss fuel injectors, compression ratios and anti-lock brakes, and all of that would be valid. “But there’s also a lot of people that just want to get in the car and press that big button and go,” Mark said. Controls work the same way. Most customers want basic dimming, schedules, energy savings and security. Those concepts are easy to understand and easy to sell, with a technical specialist backing up the sale, much like a mechanic who specializes in fuel injectors.

Mark sees a familiar pattern from the early LED days, when engineers wanted to explain electrons and deposition layers. The industry broke them of that habit, and he believes controls are next.

“It’s beautiful, it’s complex, it’s elegant,” he said, “but it’s not necessary to solve the customer’s problem.”

US LED is controls agnostic. The company currently works with Synapse and Casambi and remains open to other systems, depending on the needs of the job. Mark believes US LED already does controls well at a certain level, but sees room to integrate them more deeply. When I reminded Mark that he once talked about putting a radio in every light fixture, he didn’t hesitate. “It’s happening,” he said.

A Catalog That Surprised Him

When I asked about competition, Mark said the biggest differentiator is the breadth of the product line. “You would be shocked,” he said. “It was just page after page after page of products.” US LED offers nearly every standard indoor and outdoor product, along with some residential product for office upfits.

Running Katy From East Tennessee

Mark now lives in Johnson City, Tennessee. He has no plans to move to Texas, and the distance doesn’t worry him. “I literally had a desk in Atlanta, a desk in Helsinki and a desk in Singapore,” he said.

He expects to spend at least a week a month in Katy, likely more at the beginning. He also plans to go out with the crews. “I want to actually do some of the installs and get my hands dirty,” Mark said. He called the early months “a lot of listening and learning.”

The Growth X Factor

Ron remains CEO and will stay hands-on in day-to-day operations. Mark says the two will lead as a team together with the company’s executive team. Beyond controls, Mark believes his biggest contribution may be experience scaling businesses. “Ron has built an incredible foundation,” he said. “The ethos of growth is something that I think I can bring. That’s an X factor that I hope works out for both of us.”

Mark summed it up himself. “It’s actually a very simple story,” he said. I agree, and if your humble editor could buy US LED stock today, I would, because of Mark McClear.