Meyda Lighting transitions to the third generation

YORKVILLE — “This July 11, you can meet the fabulous Beekman Boys at the Old Forge Home Show,” Max Cohen, event impresario, said in a recent YouTube video. The Beekman Boys, who bought a mansion in Sharon Springs where they became farmers and launched their lifestyle brand with goat-milk soups and cheeses, created a reality-television show that runs on the Cooking Channel.

“The Old Forge Home Show is just one of 10 trade shows I attend annually,” notes Cohen, a nine-year employee of Meyda Lighting (pronounce MY-DA), a Yorkville–based manufacturer and retailer of custom and decorative lighting. His grandfather Meyer launched the business as a hobby in 1974. “My primary role at the company is sales and design,” Cohen stresses. “This keeps me on the road six months out of the year to brand the uniqueness of a four-decades-old design tradition inspired by artists such as Tiffany and Stickley. The goal is to promote national recognition of our brand.”

Max Cohen, 28, is not the only third-generation scion in the family business. His older brother Chester (Chet) Cohen, 29, a five-year employee, focuses on manufacturing operations. “We’re passing up business,” opines Chet. “Our current lead time of eight weeks (from a signature on a drawing) is too long for some customers, who simply won’t consider us [as a vendor]. We need to add a few engineers, fabricators, and wiring specialists now to reduce the production time to four weeks. But finding the right help is not easy for our facility here in Utica.”

The two brothers work with their father, Robert (Bob) Cohen, the company president and a 40-year employee who is active in the business. “Meyda is a complicated business,” opines the president, “that deals with a lot of market segments including Internet dealers, brick-and-mortar dealers, designers, customers who buy directly at our retail outlets, and buyers in industries such as hospitality and restaurants … Recently we added another market segment — restoration. The chandelier we built for the recently refurbished Stanley Theater in downtown Utica was 35 feet wide, 11 feet high, and weighed 6,000 pounds. Meyda Lighting is currently bidding on lighting in the Hotel Syracuse’s restored grand lobby and the Persian Terrace [part of a $60 million renovation].

What further complicates the business is keeping track of 15,000 [discrete] items in our catalog; a growing manufacturing operation that produces unique lighting; and the fact that our products include aluminum, bronze, brass, copper, textiles, acrylics, and wood.” Bob Cohen later added stone as another material when he showed this reporter a new fixture made of translucent stone from India. Meyda calls the line “Opykta,” the Greek word for stone. The company is not only a manufacturer and retailer but also an importer, designer, and distributor.

The start

“As Max says, we didn’t start out as a business,” remembers Bob Cohen. “My mother [Ida] was tired of looking at ‘vintage cars’ in our backyard, which my father [Meyer] said he would restore one day. She asked him to install a stained-glass window to block the view. Since Meyer was retired and a master tinkerer, he and my mother took a course in making stained-glass windows … That was in 1974. My parents had fun making windows, terrariums, lamps, and planters in our basement and sold them at area craft shows. Business was slow; the door usually opened only when the wind blew. In 1980, a local Methodist Church ordered four stained-glass windows. Then, I started to think of my parents’ hobby as a business.”

Bob Cohen joined his parents in 1975 while still a teenager. “I helped out at the craft shows and watched the business begin to grow,” posits the company president. “Our growth was spurred by an interest in Tiffany designs that swept the country in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1995, we bought the Quality Bent Glass Co., which created original lighting fixtures, including the famous Coca-Cola chandeliers supplied in the early 1900s to Louis Comfort Tiffany’s studio in New York City. In the late 1990s, we bought Mecco Art, a metal-art studio, and in 2009, Meyda acquired 2nd Ave Lighting to expand our metal-lighting sales both on the commercial and residential side of the business. Our development has been a combination of organic growth and acquisitions.”

To Bob Cohen, Meyda Lighting is still a hobby. But he and his sons recognize that it’s also a business, which currently employs 75 people at the plant and retail store in Yorkville. The facility encompasses 170,000 square feet of manufacturing, inventory, retail, and distribution space sited on 8.5 acres. Meyda also leases 1,600 square feet in Old Forge for a retail outlet. 

The company stock is held by the family. The Business Journal estimates Meyda Lighting’s annual revenue is between $12 million and $15 million. 

Since 1989, Meyda has contracted with manufacturers in China to produce some of their lamps. The plant operates one shift, five-days a week.

Meyda Lighting’s corporate mission statement is simple. “We’re here to say yes,” says Max Cohen, “and make it happen,” quips his father. “Designers and customers are always sending us sketches and asking whether we can produce the design,” continues the younger son. “Sometimes the sketch is just a scrap of paper and sometimes it’s a verbal idea of what a product should look like. We pass on the ideas to our engineers, who [uncannily] turn the concept into reality. Meyda’s growth is also based on new-product development. A few years ago, we created a lighting innovation by integrating lighting fixtures and fan mechanisms. The new collection takes a lighting fixture and inserts a fan mechanism inside the fixture. We call the line ‘Chandel-Airs’ and offer them in any size or color combination. This really is a creative business.”

Meyda Lighting started in the Cohens’ residence in Old Forge. On June 7 of this year, the family dedicated a new “Creative Arts Wing” at View, a nonprofit visual and performing-arts center in Old Forge. The wing houses a pottery studio, stained-glass and fused-glass stations, woodworking area, and culinary-arts teaching kitchen. “The wing is the result of a challenge grant by Bob Cohen,” says Kevin Jost, a longtime friend and volunteer fundraiser for View. “Old Forge has had a robust arts community going back to the 1950s. It was natural to turn to those families with a long association with the area. Bob and his sons are artists, and the wing was a perfect match with Meyda’s mission.” Bob Cohen’s response: “This was just a nice way to say thank you to the community which has supported us [for decades].”

Third generation

Meyda Lighting’s transition to the third generation is an ongoing process. “There are a lot of moving parts to this business,” observes Chet Cohen. “Also, my dad has 40 years of knowledge and long-term relationships with customers. Max and I are slowly absorbing the knowledge, much of which is in his head, and building relationships with his customers. We have a strong brand and want to build on our reputation. The business is growing, but it’s a daily challenge to create unique products, price them properly, and produce them efficiently.”

Family-business experts tell us that 40 percent of businesses are passed to the second generation and only 13 percent to the third generation. These companies need to be nimble and build a consensus around change, according to Craig Aronoff, co-founder and principal consultant at the Family Business Consulting Group in Chicago. 

Bob Cohen, his wife Ellie (who has the corporate moniker: director of visual merchandising), Chet, and Max are steering Meyda Lighting successfully as the company transitions to the third generation. The spark of entrepreneurship is also alive in the Cohens’ youngest son Ben, who runs a business in Old Forge, and in Bob’s mother Ida, who at 95, still manages the Nutty Putty Miniature Golf course in Old Forge.