October 7, 2025
Former Elk Execs Launch New Brand With Familiar Inventory
Liquidated inventory returns as former Elk team launches new company 100 days after shutdown
Just over three months after Elk Home closed its doors and announced inventory liquidation, some former company leaders have reemerged with a new lighting venture. Atlas Lighting and Home is already operational — shipping product, marketing to wholesale partners, and, in a subtle twist, doing so from a different address in the same tiny town of 2,200 residents where Elk’s final warehouse auction was held.
The new company is not affiliated with Atlas Lighting Products Inc., the 33-year-old commercial lighting brand owned by LSI Industries.
Atlas Lighting and Home is helmed by Todd Webb, the former CEO of Elk Group International, who now serves as both CEO and CFO of the new entity. Alyson Lockwood, formerly Elk’s Director of Marketing Services, is now the Vice President of Marketing at Atlas. Corporate filings show the business was incorporated in Georgia in September, with a registered office at 1473 Yorkhouse Road in Rabun Gap. The address differs from Elk’s former facility but remains in the same small Appalachian town near the North Carolina border.
Former Elk president Mark Fludgate holds a financial interest in the company but does not have an active operational role, according to Lockwood.
In an October 6 email to Inside Lighting, Lockwood clarified that Atlas is “a brand new company,” but that her and Webb’s prior relationships with Elk Home allowed them to acquire a portion of Elk’s remaining inventory from the liquidation group that took over late in the process. She noted that Atlas is only listing products available for immediate shipment, operating on a “fully stocked” model until its first new product launch in early 2026.
Residential Roots, Commercial Reach?
The company’s press release describes Atlas Lighting and Home as a wholesale-only brand serving retailers, showrooms, e-commerce partners, interior designers, and hospitality designers. The product offering includes lighting, furniture, and décor — echoing the lifestyle approach Elk Home pursued in its later years.
While Elk’s product line leaned heavily residential, it was also represented by a select network of commercial lighting agents across the U.S. and Canada. That dual-channel presence helped the brand gain visibility across multiple sectors. Whether Atlas will replicate that strategy remains to be seen — but if its leadership sees similar potential, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the new company appear on commercial agent line cards in the coming months.
Timing and Trajectory
Atlas’s rapid emergence raises natural questions about just how quickly the idea for the new business came together. When asked whether the company was in development during Elk’s wind-down, Lockwood didn’t directly address the timeline but emphasized the independence of Atlas and the advantages of the team’s prior industry relationships.
Even if the transition from Elk to Atlas wasn’t formally planned in advance, the speed and confidence of the launch suggest a team that had a strong sense of its next move. Whether the market welcomes that move will depend on execution, differentiation, and perhaps most of all, distribution.
In the meantime, Rabun Gap remains — somewhat improbably — the setting for a lighting industry reinvention.
