In the lighting industry one of these links is Mico Lighting. Started in 1972, when it was run from a small unit and an upstairs bedroom in Pudsey, West Yorkshire by Michael Kitching and Colin Durber, it is now one of the largest privately-owned distributors of lamps in the industry and boasts in excess of 100 years of lighting experience by its three directors (Kitching, Durber and Graham Waite-Pullan).
Today, the Pudsey-based company distributes, in the main, to UK-based commercial end users and specialist suppliers from a 30,000sq.m warehouse. The company's dedication to customer support and total quality is the key to its success, say Mico, an ISO 9002 Quality Assured company. Many of the staff have been working for Mico for years and as a result there is a real family feel to the company, with about 50 employees working full time.Margaret Gott, quality/recycling manager, says: "Mico distributes over 5,000 different lamp types and keeps a close eye on shifts in the market and user taste, new fixture development and thus new demands for different types of lamps. We only use quality suppliers, ensuring that our customers get the best possible product at the best price."
With one eye on the former the other is firmly focused on the WEEE Directive. WEEE set a target to industry to recycle 80% of UK manufactured lamps containing mercury and other hazardous substances: shamefully, estimates claim less than 5% are recycled currently. Mico offers a comprehensive tailor-made recycling service to all sizes of companies, ensuring that each complies completely with all appropriate directives.
With the prospect of energy prices rising almost exponentially and set to continue their upward trend, organizations are now being forced to look at ways of reducing power consumption costs. To that end, Mico has ensured that any member of staff dealing with sales in any capacity is regularly trained in relevant applications and directives, enabling them to advise customers where substitutions can be made, generating substantial energy savings.
However, sometimes counteracting this is the ever-expanding classification of what constitutes an entertainment venue today. This has meant that the focus of the specialist lamp has widened, and almost any public space can have a reasonably complex entertainment lighting systems being found in pubs and clubs, leisure centres, retail outlets and shopping centres. These venues often don't have the back-up of a trained specialist technician and when it comes to servicing stock, things can get confusing. This is just one of many areas where Mico feels it can help.
Supplying to a wide range of industries from major hotel chains to chicken farms, and from sunbed manufacturers through to entertainment equipment suppliers, Mico offers a font of knowledge on all things illuminating. The company prides itself on the fact that it is reactive to market fluctuation and is selective of the brands that it will sell, quality can be very diverse these days and Mico believes in only supplying premier branded lamps.
In recent years the market has been flooded with cheaper, lower quality products and with users increasingly led by budget, the market has become increasingly competitive. Mico has therefore endeavoured to make its services to customers more user-friendly, offering online access to accounts, a wide range of customer account reporting from its own system, performance figures from point of order to delivery offering users a more accurate view of their own activity and making repeat orders simple and pain-free.
With both online and call centre ordering options, plus the Mico staff's highly developed knowledge of over 5,000 lamps, the company believes th
