THE LOHUIS HISTORY

The history of the present LOHUIS LAMPBANK begins in 1970 when Mr Anton Lohuis started his lamp company in a small room of his parent's house in Hendrik Ido Ambacht in The Netherlands. He had just graduated for his 5 years Trade - Evening - School which followed his prior education at the HBS-B which is more technical and mathematics driven.

Whilst he was following the last courses at school he worked, during the daytime,  at a company that was selling lamp holders and switches and many of them had small lamps inside. Many customers phoned that company for supply of special small lamps and soon it appeared that the company supplied only a 100 models in a market where more than 100.000 different specifications were used.

The night of his graduation he painted the town red with his classmates resulting in the fact that he was late for work the following morning. His boss was angry about the late arrival and complained resulting in Anton Lohuis packing his belongings and leaving for home and starting his own company the very same day attempting to supply every small lamp one could ever be looking for. As he was only 18 years of age the court had to declare that he could be responsible for his own business as his mother was very afraid that she might get bankrupted with this so active son!

In those days most supplies of such special lamps came from Germany and soon it was obvious that Japan was more competitive. and by 1982 an exporting company was established in Tokyo in the Gotanda district called Nippon Lohuis Company Ltd from where supplies were arranged to the different companies in the group like Lohuis Lampen BV in Holland, Lohuis Lamps Ltd in Leeds, England, Lohuis Lampen BvbA in Belgium, Lamparas LOHUIS in Barcelona, Spain,  Lohuis Lampen GmbH in Hamburg, Germany, Lampes Lohuis SARL in France, Lohuis Lampen AG in Switzerland and LOHUIS USA Inc in Santa Rosa, California.

We were also manufacturing lamps in our own factories MEDILIGHTS BV in Holland, NORDLICHT GLUHLAMPEN In Hamburg, Germany and later some time also in LAMAPARAS ECA in Barcelona, Spain and lately in HANKUK LOHUIS CO.LTD in Seoul, South Korea.

Hundreds of millions of small lamps were made for him by the STANLEY ELECTRIC COMPANY in Japan amongst others  and successfully sold to some 10,000 customers out of which 3.000 in Holland alone and to many famous companies like LEGO Systems in Denmark, TELEMECANIQUE in France, RS Components in England, just to name a few. 

When the new head office was opened in Belgium in 1987 known as LOHUIS INTERNATIONAL NV , Mr Lohuis had just opened his own factory in Korea, HANKUK LOHUIS CO LTD in Seoul, and his new sales company in the United States LOHUIS USA Inc in Santa Rosa, California.                                     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                A little later he opened a factory in Malaysia Johor Bahru under the name of Malaysian Lohuis SDN BHD. This was a factory for halogen lamps selling to Philips in Malaysia, Singapore and Australia.

By this time he was called a GIANT in MINIATURE lamps. Tourists that were travelling by bus from Holland to Paris made always a stop to see his beautiful mansion of the KING OF LAMPS  with 140.000 m2 of gardens in Meer (Belgium).

After the fall of the wall in Berlin, Mr Lohuis became heavily involved during  1990/1991  in the privatization of enterprises in East Europe. In Romania a joint venture company was established  under the name of ROMSTAR LOHUIS, a joint venture with the two biggest factories there employing 14,000 people SELUM in Fieni and ROMLUX in Tirgoviste. In Poland intensive negotiations about cooperation took place with POLAMP in Warszawa, Pabianice and Katowice. in Germany Mr Lohuis succeeded to privatize the NARVA enterprise in Brand-Erbisdorf, a huge plant for the production of fluorescent tubes using TOSIBA technology and machines. In Prague negotiations took place with TESLA and in Russia a joint venture agreement was signed with LISMA in SARANSK, the biggest lamp manufacturer in Europe with 35.000 employees. Other joint-venture agreements were signed in Lvov, Baku and Leningrad.

It was after the disaster with the Tsjernobyl nuclear power generator that Mr Lohuis agreed with Mr. Levakin, the president director of LISMA in Saransk, who was also a member of the DOEMA parliament, to try to make all factories in Russia stop to make incandescent lamps and make them switch over to the production of energy saving lamps. If so, some 10% of nuclear power stations could have been closed and of course the most dangerous and unsafe ones at first.

Mr.Levakin started to lobby with this idea in Moscow whilst Mr Lohuis started the lobby at all the members of the European Parliament in Brussels. Enormous amounts were spent to secure the help of professional consultants and a mission with a special chartered plane took place full with specialists, machine-makers, material suppliers, packaging specialists, press people, management consultants, etc

 A conference took place in Warsaw and in Saransk and in Vienna as well where most of the East European factories were present.

As we all know now it took more than 15 years after until some governments in the world started to ban the incandescent lamp.

Unfortunately this success story came to an end in 1994 as interest rates in Belgium were rocket high (14%) and because the core business was not managed well during Mr Lohuis' two years absence. The group became heavily over-financed with these huge investments in Eastern Europe and these (too) huge development expenses.                                                                 

The company collapsed in 1994. Mr Lohuis lost his capital of 6 million Euro's and was accused by the banks of lots of things like miss-management and fraud. It took until the year 2000 that the court in Turnhout Belgium judged that Mr Lohuis was not guilty of any of the alleged accusations. This verdict was confirmed by the highest court in Belgium only in 2007. Proceedings will start in 2008 to recover the lost capital from the banks involved. For the Russian partner of Mr Lohuis, Mr Levakin things turned out even worse as Mr Levakin committed suicide when we could not succeed to convince the governments within the time frame available.

Meanwhile billions of dollars have been spent by the ATOMIC ENERGY BURO to get control of the atomic energy plants in Eastern Europe whereas perhaps 100 million dollars would have been enough to make Mr Lohuis and Mr Levakin succeed in changing Eastern Europe to energy saving lamps instead of the incandescent lamps; a process that now also takes place very gradually but at a very much lower pace.

When the company so died in 1994, Mr Lohuis faced a situation where many of his previous employees started their own companies which continued the activities that Mr Lohuis had started. There are at least 20 new born companies now in 7 countries that all together even sell more than Mr Lohuis had achieved with his company.

Because of this situation and because Mr Lohuis did not want to compete with his own previous employees he decided to live in Hong Kong with his family in 1995 and 1996 to study the Chinese lighting market. It must also be said that he lost his interest in miniature lamps because of the slowing demand with light emitting diodes that became brighter and brighter to replace them. The real interest was now in the general lighting and in the implementation of the Lohuis’ trademark. Another consideration was the fast changing world with the internet coming up, immense competition and shorter communication lines.

Mr Lohuis thought it was now time for decentralization instead of centralization which was the case when having so many millions of lamps in stock in Belgium before.

In the USA he studied the opportunities with franchise of the business. Ever since, his company LOHUIS FRANCHISE is signing agreements with dealers all over the world that wish to sell lighting products in the LOHUIS trademark in a well defined exclusive territory. To streamline the supplies a joint-venture company was started in Hong Kong under the name of LOHUIS HONG KONG Ltd together with WON-IK CORPORATION of Korea. The latter one is famous for supply of lamp-making machinery as they did to GULF ADVANCED LIGHTING (GALUX) LLC  in Dubai Jebel Ali.

Nowadays all these franchisees get delivered from the LOHUIS LAMPBANK (CHINA) with the head office in Xiamen China and with sales-offices in Shanghai and Xiamen and product service centers in Beijing, Ningbo, Guzhen and Shenzhen. Now all LOHUIS activities in China are a part of C&D Group which is a public company at the Shanghai Stock Exchange with sales of US$ 1.500.000.000 in 2006. The division is known as LOHUIS C & D.

In 2001 the European Committee imposed an anti dumping duty on the import of Chinese energy saving lamps in spite of the defense of Chinese manufacturers that failed to be represented by professional lawyers at the hearings.                                                     

Very cheap low quality market prices were compared with high quality expensive products of Philips and Osram and by doing so enormous price differences were "proven".                                                      

Should the comparison have been with also very high quality products from China then dumping would not have been proven. Mr. Lohuis is of the opinion that this is now a clear case of protectionism caused by the European manufacturers. It has been a disaster for so many small Chinese factories but it has been the solid reason for Mr. Lohuis to invest in a new factory for energy saving lamps in Romania which is part of the European Union from January 1, 2007. China exported 1,7 billion pieces of energy saving lamps in 2005 out of which some 600 million pieces were sold to Europe. The factory in Romania is called Romania Advanced Lighting (RALUX S.A.) and it is also Mr. Lohuis intention to create here the new distribution centre for the European Union during 2009. From Romania supplies will go to the network of distributors in the European Union.

To service Arab countries and African countries which are part of COMESA, Lohuis set up a factory for energy saving lamps in Egypt in 2006.

Recently Lohuis is, with the help of Professor Chen, bringing energy saving lamps to the market with a new technology called " hot cathode high frequency lamps ". These energy saving lamps have a double life compared to the present ones, provide more lumens per Watt, and even light up when the filaments inside the tube are broken.

All with all LOHUIS controls 21 factories in China and has strategic alliances with hundreds of factories in China. Another four companies are selling the products to the domestic market in China. In 2007 substantial investment was attracted from partners in the UAE where the head office of the group is now located in Dubai under the name of LOHUIS FZC LLC.

Today LOHUIS is the 5th largest brand in lighting sources and lighting fixtures in the world and it is on the way to capture 5% of the global market in the range on offer which represents US$ 1 billion in sales per year.