Meet the Team: Lisa Yeadon
As Director of Marketing Communications for A.L.P. Lighting Components and Bill Brown Sales, Lisa is responsible for developing and implementing integrated marketing communications strategies that align with business objectives. She facilitates sales enablement and demand generation activities by developing multimedia sales tools, such as digital and social media, trade shows and events, advertising and PR, and presentations and collateral.
A native of Yorkshire, England, Lisa moved to the US in high school and lived all over the East Coast before making Chicago her home 19 years ago. She is one of a set of triplets, with two identical brothers, and her family includes husband Bob and four adult children ranging in age from 18 to 29.
She was always studious and somewhat of a bookworm. Lisa rekindled her passion for education by getting a master’s degree in Organizational Communication from DePaul University, a whopping 30 years after completing undergrad. It was an eye-opening experience! Since then, she has also attained post-graduate certificates in Digital Marketing and Corporate Communications from Cornell University.
One of Lisa’s favorite career stories happened early in her tenure with A.L.P. When unforeseen circumstances threatened to derail her first sales event, CEO Steve Brown gave her some memorable business advice that she still heeds today; “It’s not how well you plan, but how well you react when your plans go wrong!”
A.L.P., Advertising, Bill Brown Sales, bookworm, collateral, Cornell University, DePaul University, Digital Media, Director of Marketing Communication, England, Lisa Yeadon, Meet the Team, presentations, Social Media, Trade Shows, triplets
Announcement: Weather-Related Closures
Due to severe winter weather, A.L.P.’s Dickson, TN plant remains closed today. We are assessing conditions on an ongoing basis and will re-open when it is safe.
A.L.P.’s Monterrey, Mexico plant remains without power due to widespread weather-related outages. We have been advised that electricity is expected to be restored on Thursday, 2/18/21.
Our customer service team is available to provide updates and handle urgent requests. Please contact us at (800) 621-1348 or by email at CSDept@alplighting.com.
UPDATE 02.18.2021
Power has been restored to A.L.P.’s Monterrey, Mexico plant, and this location has resumed normal operations. A.L.P.’s Dickson, TN plant is closed due to inclement weather.
Dickson, Monterrey Mexico, Power Outage, Weather, Weather-related
Why you should care…about glare!
The importance of reflectors on LED highbays.
Do you ever wear a baseball cap or sunglasses? Ever use your car visor? These shielding actions reduce glare, or “bad” light that detracts from our ability to see. In a factory, warehouse, or retail facility, highbays are installed to light the space, but if the highbays are unshielded, glare interferes with what we can see. In commercial settings, glare is more than an inconvenience. This low visibility can hurt safety, productivity, and health.
Below are three photometry tests on the same highbay. The first with no reflector, the second with a shallow reflector, and the third with a deeper reflector. The glare reduction, while having little impact on lumen output, is dramatic.
Using a reflector, not only are high angle candela reduced, but they are also emitted over a much larger surface area, reducing high angle luminance by a hundredfold! If your facility has light-colored ceilings, installing reflectors has the added benefit of producing uplight. Uplight further reduces apparent brightness, eliminates the “cave” effect, and makes the space feel larger.
LexaLite® brand glare shields, from the economical and shallow LENA 16™ to the deep, high-performance S16, kill the glare without killing the light. Specify the LENA 16 or S16 by LexaLite on your next highbay project. We can customize the mounting mechanism to fit virtually any highbay.
Deep Reflector, Glare Control, glare reduction, Highbays, LENA 16, LexaLite, Lumen Output, photometry, Reflector, Reflexor, S16, Shallow Reflector, uplight
Meet the Team: Kurt Puffpaff
Kurt Puffpaff ROCKS! Though in Kurt’s case, we mean that quite literally. A musician and music aficionado, Kurt plays guitar, sings, and is a huge fan of ‘70s rock bands like AC/DC, Styx and Led Zeppelin. He also writes and records his own original tunes, played on his favorite Birdseye Maple Les Paul guitar. Besides his love for music, Kurt is an avid outdoorsman and a die-hard Kansas City Chiefs fan.
Born and raised in Charlevoix, Michigan, Kurt has moved around the Midwest for his career before returning to his hometown a few years ago and settling with his wife Diane and their four sons, aged from 11 to 22.
Kurt is currently the National Sales Manager for A.L.P.’s custom optical products, but he has been in the lighting industry since 1993. He started his career as a territory manager for LexaLite (now part of A.L.P.) where he learned the business from the ground up, even delivering a few orders by truck when the business depended on it. Drawing on his decades of expertise in injection molding, Kurt can answer almost any molding question that comes his way. You are also invited to pick his brain on classic rock, football, or hunting.
A.L.P., Charlevoix, injection molding, Kansas City Chiefs, Kurt Puffpaff, Les Paul Guitar, LexaLite, musician, National Sales Manager, outdoorsman
Meet the Team: Alan Dorsky
At one of Alan Dorsky’s first sales meetings with A.L.P., he was kind enough to include a pronunciation guide to help attendees decipher his extremely strong, distinctive Boston accent. Fortunately for our customers, phrases like “Pahk the cah in Hah-vahd yahd,” rarely come up during lighting sales calls!
Alan’s lighting career spans over four decades, as he’s held sales and sales management positions with a number of lighting companies including Nutone Manufacturing, Sterling Lighting and Lightcraft of California. With that much time in the industry, Alan has numerous sales “war stories.” He will certainly never forget, for example, visiting customers in the Midwest and having to drive through a solid three hours of tornadoes to get to his destination!
Alan joined A.L.P. when we purchased his family’s company, Reflek Manufacturing. He spent 19 years as Reflek’s VP of marketing and sales and has been instrumental in the continued success of this custom line of spun aluminum reflectors. Alan also heads sales for A.L.P.’s global sourcing solutions program.
He and his wife Nancy live in Scituate, Massachusetts. They are parents to sons Adam and Jason, and proud grandparents of Miles, Jameson, Evan and Justin. As Alan and his fellow Bostonians would say, his family is “wicked good!”
Alan Dorsky, Boston, Four decades, Global Sourcing, lighting industry, Meet the Team, Reflek, sales, Spun Aluminum Reflectors
Meet the Team: Steve Dix
During the workweek, Steve Dix may focus on shipping products to our customers, but on summer weekends, he is focused on a different kind of shipping, at the helm of his Ocean Yacht Sport Fishing boat. When not sailing the Chesapeake Bay and North Atlantic, he enjoys traveling the globe with his wife Patty, a retired music professor, and their grown children Brian, Kaitlyn, and Sean. Together, they have visited Africa, England, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Turks & Cacaos.
When it comes to extensive travel, he may have seen it all. But with more than 25 years of manufacturing experience in a variety of roles with A.L.P., Steve has seen (and done) it all where the lighting industry is concerned, too.
Since joining A.L.P., Steve has held progressively responsible management positions in the areas of warehousing, operations, and logistics. He currently serves as Vice President, Customer Fulfillment, managing the entire order processing experience from customer service and inventory to warehousing and logistics.
A.L.P., Chesapeake Bay, Fishing boat, Inventory, Logistics, Manufacturing Experience, Meet the Team, Operations, Steve Dix, traveling, Vice President Customer Fulfillment, Warehousing