A company poised to breakthrough BY BEVERLY INGLESBY A presentation to the Business Peer Group Advisory Program PLASA’S BUSINESS PEER GROUP ADVISORY PROGRAM offers members the opportunity to meet regularly with a small group of industry people with similar business issues, questions, and solutions in a non-competitive atmosphere to discuss, share, and brainstorm to help explore best practices in running your business. To avoid restraint-of-trade concerns, the group follows appropriate meeting guidelines to ensure anti-trust compliance, and uses a facilitator at all meetings. Group membership provides a foundation for building professional relationships that will endure throughout your business career. To learn more about joining a peer group, contact Lori Rubinstein in the PLASA North American offi ce. The original group holds quarterly day-long meetings usually in conjunction with an industry event. For their summer meeting they invited Bob Luther, CEO of Lex Products, to speak on the challenges of growing the business with three different markets. This article has been assembled from that presentation. As a member of a business peer group, Bob Luther started his presentation with a salute to the PLASA BPGAP participants for their willingness to challenge each other to grow as business leaders in a positive peer-to-peer learning environment. Bob credits his participation in the Renaissance Executive Forum in Connecticut (which he joined in 2006) with helping him to accelerate the growth of Lex Products. Give us an overview of Lex Products. Lex Products was established in 1989 as a manufacturers’ rep fi rm. Today, Lex manufacturers in fi ve UL categories, including: portable distribution boxes, auto transfer switches, cable assemblies, wiring devices, and switches and panels. The majority of our manufacturing consists of assembly work. The company capabilities include CNC metal processing, CNC plastic machinery, and injection molding. We have facilities in Shelton, CT and Sun Valley, CA. We employ over 200 people. Our three key markets are entertainment, industrial, and military. What helped you grow the entertainment market? It was 1991 and I was calling on a fi lm rental company in New FALL 2011 The Lex Products team enjoying a Yankees game include: Allen De Marcken, Blake Whilden, Tom Siko, Guy Gallo, Niklas Anderson, Bob Ferra, Rebecca Lore, Sean Sloat, Vikki Shantz, Mike O’Reilly, Rod Taylor, Patrick O’Keefe and Graham Likeness. York named Paris Film Productions. I didn’t know anything about their business. I was showing the owner, Gary Paris my lines of connectors that I sold as loose devices. He had an immediate need for cable assemblies that used the exact connectors I was showing him but he had no way to make up the assemblies. He asked me if I would make the assemblies. Times being what they were, I accepted. He gave me two days to make 50 assemblies. When I completed my task on time he predicted that all the fi lm rental houses in New York would buy from me. I noticed that the cable assemblies were being plugged in to metal portable power distribution boxes. I remembered seeing rubber boxes at a trade show in Germany and thought they would be an improvement over the metal. Based on this, I developed Lex’s line of rubber portable power distribution boxes. The rubber boxes immediately became popular with the industrial generator rental companies. That led us to pursue the industrial market. What is different about the industrial market? It is very similar to the military or entertainment markets— 26 FALL 2011