[MaxLite] Important Update

Wed Apr 3 07:28:00 CDT 2019

Folks,

When I started with MaxLite a little over three months ago I committed to communicate often, be candid with you, and share good and bad news.

The bad news: our first quarter (Q1) results weren't good.  We finished the quarter -13% compared to Q1 last year.  From early indications the overall market and our competitors were down too.  There are various reasons for the slow start to 2019; bad weather throughout the country, the buildup of inventories to "beat" the tariff increase (which hasn't materialized), and general slowness of project activity.

We do start the second quarter with a very large order we couldn't ship last week.  Plus, from conversations with our sales team, distributors and customers, we believe Q2 will be stronger.  Even so, we need to take action now to address our significant cost increases from last year.  As I mentioned during my first Town Hall meetings in January, we had a net gain of 37 new team members last year.  The Company did this with the belief our sales would increase significantly late last year and into early this year.  We also added a significant amount of inventory to support the forecasted sales increases.  As you know, our sales haven't grown to offset these additional costs.

Today, I took a step to streamline our organization and reduce some cost.  We made a difficult decision and let go Rich Dignan, Carolyn Kaminsky and Paul Shaskan.  All three contributed positively to MaxLite.  Please join me in wishing them well.

The good news: I'm happy to announce the promotion of Brendan Drew to the position of Vice President, Sales Operations.  Brendan will report to me and lead the following three initiatives....

  1.  Late last year, we identified we needed someone to lead our Special Projects initiative to help strengthen our ability to quickly identify and support special product opportunities.  Jun Xiang stepped up and has done a nice job leading our Special Project efforts.  This capability helps MaxLite offer best in class service to our customers, distributors and reps.  It also contributes to growing our sales, profitably.  To this end, we are expanding our Special Projects team by adding Alex Truong to complement Jun Xiang's efforts.
  2.  We've been exploring ways to better serve our customers with our Assembly operations.  Effective immediately we will change the Assembly team to be a Value-Add organization.  Vanessa Cervantes, Jarrod Collin's Value-Add team and Noah Ko will now report to Brendan.  Our Value-Add centers will focus on expanding our product offering to meet customer and market requests quickly and profitably.  Over the coming months Brendan will work closely with Sales, Product Marketing & Engineering and our Value-Add team to identify areas we may change and enhance to offer truly differentiated services to better serve our customers.
  3.  Ease of doing business with MaxLite is critical to our long-term success.  One area that should set us apart from our competition is how we handle quality, RGAs, technical support and product training.  Effective immediately, our US based Quality team of Zenny Haczyk and Peter Fass will report to Brendan.  We will also treat our RGA process as part of our quality service.  To this end, Alex Fazekas and Gustavo Garcia now report to Brendan too.
With the departure of Rich, Carolyn and Paul, here is how we will restructure their responsibilities, beyond what I outlined above....

  *   Logistics is now be led by Michael Marie.  Joe Byra, Jarrod Collins and Jay Lee now report to Michael.
  *   Tom Ullrich - Continuous Improvement and Nichole Anthony - Operation Project Manager, now report to Brendan Drew and Michael Marie.  Tom also now has responsibility for our NJ Facility.  Tom will work closely with me to insure we continue to improve our working environment.
  *   Human Resources: I'm happy to announce the promotion of Barbara Ottinger to Director of Human Resources.  Sadye Peters now reports to Barbara.
  *   Customer Relations, including Michele Weslowski's and Lisa Langley's teams now report to Todd Kim.  Until we fill our current opening of VP C&I Sales, Rich Carr will report to Rick Schuett.
Also, many of you are currently involved in developing our much needed long-term strategic plan.  This plan will set-up the roadmap to target new and growing markets; and position MaxLite to excel in serving our customers, distributors and reps.  We will share our plan with all of you when complete, most likely in early this summer.
I know this news is disruptive and for those no longer part of our team, not welcomed.  Fortunately, we have excellent leaders and teammates who are stepping up, taking on new responsibilities and will help continue to lead us to success.  Yon, the leadership team, and I are excited about the opportunities ahead as our markets continue to grow and innovate.  We will continue our record as one of the most successful companies in the lighting industry.  Thank you for your continued support of our initiatives and for helping make MaxLite a great place to work.
I welcome your input and am always available if you want to share that input,

Spencer
(862) 485-5633

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