Why Sterling Lighting Chose Lighting Professionals Over Distributors

By Damien Sanchez

When Patrick and I started Sterling Lighting, the majority of manufacturers sold to retail distributors, and most outdoor lighting fixtures were purchased through retailers, either online or in a brick-and-mortar store. As we began in 2011, we had to wrestle with a major decision: Who did we want our customer to be? Retail distributors whose customers were retailers? Outdoor lighting professionals? Or the homeowners whose homes our lights would ultimately illuminate in amazing designs?

That decision helped define who we wanted to be as a company. Let’s walk through how and why we made the choice to serve Outdoor Lighting Professionals and ultimately sell direct to business (D2B) to fulfill our purpose of elevating this industry.

Choosing Our Customer: No Middlemen, Just Professionals  

This wasn’t a tough debate, but Patrick and I were very intentional about thinking it through. Patrick has 25 years of design and installation experience—he runs his own successful outdoor lighting business, Enlightened Lighting. He’s been in the trenches, doing designs, making sales, training his team, and working with fixtures in real-world conditions. He knew, and still knows, the pain points of running an outdoor lighting business.

I started working with Patrick in 2006, doing nighttime design consults on my off-duty days from the fire department. That experience exposed me to many of the same challenges he faced. We knew firsthand what pros needed, and what they didn’t.

Even though we knew in our gut that Outdoor Lighting Professionals should be our customer, we took the time to be thorough, explore all options, and articulate why.

Why We Said No to Retail Distribution  

We knew we were in the business of crafting lights that solved problems for designers and installers, not chasing price-driven DIY sales.

Choosing retail distributors to be our customers would have meant giving up the direct relationship with outdoor lighting professionals and relying on middlemen who didn’t understand the real-world challenges of design and installation. They don’t install lighting systems, run service calls, or design outdoor spaces. They weren’t facing the same problems we were solving, which meant they wouldn’t advocate for better solutions.

Retail distribution also adds unnecessary costs. Every time a product moves through another layer of distribution, the price goes up. That would have forced us to make compromises on materials and design to hit a price dictated by a spreadsheet, not by quality or performance. If we catered to retail distribution, we’d be designing fixtures or luminaires based on what they could buy and resell, rather than what would truly last in the field.

Another key issue was the feedback loop. By selling direct to Outdoor Lighting Professionals, we hear their feedback immediately. That allows us to make improvements quickly. Going through distributors would have added too many layers between us and the people actually using our products. The longer the feedback loop, the harder it is to make incremental improvements.

There were benefits to retail distribution. We could have grown sales faster, relied on distributors to hold inventory, and avoided creating enemies out of certain sales channels. But none of those short-term wins outweighed our long-term goal: to build the best lighting products for professionals.

Why We Chose Not to Sell to Homeowners  

At first glance, selling to homeowners might seem tempting, many companies in the industry have gone that route. But we decided against it for several key reasons.

Homeowners buy once, and then they’re done. Unlike professionals who install lighting projects year after year, homeowners make a single purchase. There’s no long-term relationship.

Selling to homeowners would have required us to teach each customer how to design, install, and maintain their system. That’s not where our expertise is best used. We knew that if we sold directly to homeowners, we would be competing with the very professionals we were trying to serve. That would have devalued their expertise and turned us into just another supplier fighting for one-time sales.

If we had taken this route, professionals would constantly be hearing: “Why should I pay you when I can buy directly from the manufacturer?” That’s not a question we wanted to put into their customers’ heads. Selling to homeowners wouldn’t have fulfilled our purpose of elevating Outdoor Lighting Professionals.

The Harder Path, But the Right One  

Selling direct to Outdoor Lighting Professionals came with challenges. Growth was slower. We made enemies of traditional distributors. We had to work harder to build relationships. We dealt with angry homeowners who wanted to buy from us directly. And we made a personal commitment to reinvest everything into building Sterling Lighting the right way.

But Patrick and I knew this wasn’t a short-term play. We saw it as a 15 to 20-year commitment, something worth investing in. For the last 13 years, we have reinvested every year, putting our savings into growing Sterling Lighting into a company that serves the people who matter most to us: Outdoor Lighting Professionals.

Looking back, choosing professionals as our customers was the best decision we ever made. We focused where it mattered -- on the people designing and installing with our lights, not on middlemen who didn’t understand the industry. We’re still here, still improving, still investing. All because we believe in lighting that lasts. I invite you to take a moment to hear from Patrick as well. And we thank you for your trust.