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By Kym Reinstadler | MiBiz
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MUSKEGON — Smart Vision Lights makes LEDs that are five times brighter than their competitors.

After a three-year stay in a business incubator, the company’s owners say Smart Vision is established enough to out-shine competitors as well.

The energy-efficient machine lighting company recently “graduated” from the business incubator at Grand Valley State University’s Michigan Alternative Renewable Energy Center (MAREC) and into its own 12,000-square-foot facility at 2359 Holton Road north of Muskegon.

“Smart Vision Lights was a struggling company operating in the red with two employees when they moved in,” said Arn Boezaart, director of MAREC. “By the time they moved out, they had a solid bottom line, eight employees and a bright future.”

Smart Vision Lights is one of the biggest success stories to emerge so far from MAREC, nestled in one of the state’s 15 SmartZones. Michigan designated these “opportunity pockets” to foster emerging technology businesses and keep more innovation in Michigan, Boezaart said.

Of the 11 start-up alternative energy and technology companies that have incubated at MAREC since it opened in 2003, Smart Vision Lights is the sixth to move out. Three remained one- or two-employee businesses when they did so.

Smart Vision Lights joins EarthTronics, a manufacturer of compact florescent lights, and its sister company, WindTronics — maker of an off-the-shelf wind turbine produced for the residential market — as the most robust companies at the time of their departure from MAREC, Boezaart said.

“It was time to move because we didn’t have room to hire another person,” said Bobby Segraves, Smart Vision Lights’ sales manager, who is a partner in the company.

A month after moving into its own digs, Smart Vision Lights added its ninth employee in production.

MAREC, located at 200 Viridian Road in Muskegon, provided various configurations of office and dry-lab space at rents below market value to engineer Matt Pinter, who had been employed by another lighting company.

Pinter, working in his basement at first, developed a competitively priced line of machine-mounted lights, many of which support automated photography used in industry to monitor manufacturing quality.

Segraves, who knew Pinter from his previous employment, soon joined as a partner.

“We have the same idea of the direction the industry is heading,” Segraves said. “We know the products that are going to be needed.”

Operating at MAREC helped Smart Vision Lights gain firm footing as a company, Segraves said.

Smart Vision Lights availed itself of federally funded business and financial consulting through the Michigan Small Business & Technology Development Center, also housed at MAREC, Segraves said.

The MISBTDC counsels and trains about 6,000 small business owners annually statewide and helps them attract investment capital.

Smart Vision Lights’ sales doubled every year to $1.7 million in 2010. Almost half the sales are to European manufacturers. Its five-year goals are to expand into Asian markets and generate more than $5 million in sales, which would require a doubling of the workforce, Segraves said.

Smart Vision Lights are unique because they are “high bright” and because each unit features an integrated safe-strobe overdrive protector, which stabilizes the electric current. Overdrives protecting other brands of machine lights are housed in a separate casing, requiring additional wiring and mounting.

Segraves said Smart Vision Lights strives to produce Michigan-made products. Electronic boards for the advanced lights are manufactured in Holland. The casings are manufactured in Kalamazoo. All assembly and testing is done in the Muskegon facility.

Boezaart said Smart Vision Lights’ story shows how state and federal partnerships can strengthen emerging local businesses and help stabilize a local economy.

He says he signed a new lease agreement in October with an energy-related company, but isn’t ready to announce it yet.

MAREC is currently home to five start-up companies. It could house up to a half-dozen more, depending on space needs of the businesses, Boezaart said.

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• grand valley state university
• michigan alternative renewable energy center
• muskegon
• smart vision lights