Name Change to Westinghouse Spikes Sales

With lamp sales up over 22 percent since it first inked a three-year licensing agreement to use the Westinghouse name, Westinghouse Lighting Corp., formerly Angelo Brothers Co., has found that a well-known but once-dormant brand name with ties to the earliest days of the electrical industry still carries considerable clout. The 57-year-old Angelo Brothers, Philadelphia, officially changed its name to Westinghouse Lighting Corp. in January, and now markets over 5,000 lamps, ceiling fans, lighting fixtures and decorative lighting hardware under that name. The corporate name change supports its exclusive, multi-year licensing agreements for use of the Westinghouse brand on lighting products. The first agreement, reached in 1997 with Westinghouse Electric Corp. Pittsburgh, (now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Viacom Inc.), allowed the company to use the Westinghouse brand on light bulbs. The company subsequently entered into agreements that expanded the license arrangement to include ceiling fans, light fixtures and decorative lighting hardware. Changing the name of a family-owned company wasn’t done without certain pangs of sentimentality, said Stan Angelo, Westinghouse Lighting Corp.’s chairman and CEO, who still remembers the day he first saw the Angelo Brothers sign replaced by the familiar Westinghouse logo at the company’s Philadelphia headquarters. When the name change was announced earlier this year, he said, “This move will clearly identify us with the Westinghouse brand, while retaining the culture, reputation and expertise we’ve established at Angelo Brothers over the past 57 years. We believe this powerful combination will help us change the face of our industry and expand our efforts to provide consumer and commercial customers with innovative, high-quality products on a global basis.” Long-time Westinghouse employee Wayne Murphy, now senior consultant, WTM Consulting, Sewickley, Pa., applauded the move. “The name had a good reputation worldwide,” he said. “It’s a smart marketing decision. It immediately puts them into a league, even though they are not near the size of the big guys.” Angelo Brothers initially marketed its products under its ABCO trade name and the Westinghouse name. But after seeing lamp sales grow over 20 percent with the new Westinghouse name, and then seeing sales of ceiling fans grow even faster with the new moniker, Angelo Brothers decided to approach Westinghouse Electric Corp., about changing its name to Westinghouse Lighting Corp. Westinghouse has also licensed its name and famous “Circle W” logo to Salton, Lake Forest, Ill., a manufacturer of small kitchen appliances and vacuum cleaners; Linear, Carlsbad, Calif., a maker of garage door openers and wireless intercom systems; and several other manufacturers. Angelo said these companies plan to spend a combined total of $100 million in advertising next year to promote their new identities. Westinghouse Lighting Corp. has seen the power of the Westinghouse brand in home centers such as Lowe’s and Menards, as well as with lighting showrooms, electrical distributors and hardware stores. Westinghouse had been one of the three largest manufacturers of lamps until 1983, when its sold its lamp operations to North American Philips, now Philips Lighting Co., Somerset, N.J. Angelo said much of the company’s sales increase is coming in the retail market because that’s its historical focus. However, he plans to take advantage of the strength of the Westinghouse brand in the commercial/industrial lighting arena, too. “We are setting up a whole new sales force to get a bigger market share in the commercial/industrial lighting market,” he said. “We always did business with electrical distributors, but the commercial/industrial market is a huge market and very diverse. It has great potential for us. The big guys (GE Lighting, Osram Sylvania and Philips Lighting) each share about a third of the market. It’s about $1.5 billion to $2 billion just in light bulb sales. There seems to be great interest in Westinghouse as an alternative brand to the existing big three.” —Dale Funk and Jim Lucy