Legrand and Leviton Have Built Formidable Lighting Fixture and Control Platforms
Much more than simply "wiring device" companies, each has forged its own path to becoming full-fledged lighting and controls solutions providers:
Legrand recently added to its portfolio of lighting and controls companies with the acquisitions of OCL Architectural Lighting and Finelite.
Leviton has recently announced the formation of a Lighting Division and shortly thereafter announced another acquisition of a lighting company, Birchwood Lighting. Birchwood is the second company that Leviton has purchased in Orange County, CA -- with Intense Lighting being the other.
These latest acquisition for Legrand and Leviton demonstrate a growing portfolio of lighting brands from two well-established electrical industry companies. Over the last two decades each have morphed into full-fledged electrical, telecom and lighting solutions companies.
Wattstopper (1996)
Horton Controls (2000)
Vantage Controls (2006)
Pinnacle Architectural Lighting (2016)
OCL Architectural Lighting (2017)
Finelite (2017)
Lighting & controls acquisitions
Macro Electronics (1997)
NSI / Colortran (1999)
JCC Lighting (2013)
Intense Lighting (2015)
ConTech Lighting (2016)
Birchwood Lighting (2017)
Each company has devised and executed its own unique strategy, yet there are some similarities in the tactics:
- Both Legrand and Leviton have grown their portfolio of lighting and controls products through acquisition and organic product development.
- Both companies started their acquisitions in the controls space, but in recent years, have made multiple acquisitions of lighting fixture manufacturers.
- It's usually smart business to refrain from publicizing agent consolidation plans unless the plan is to execute immediate, wide-spread changes. Both companies seem to be letting the individual brands remain mostly autonomous while exploring occassional opportunities for local market synergies.
- As smart fixtures and IoT continue explosive growth, it will be interesting to see how these two companies will compete with the other vertically integrated fixture/controls manufacturers like Acuity, Eaton, Hubbell, LSI, etc.