Showroom

BY RAEANNE MARSH

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SCOTT SANDLER

>>> Hinkley's Lighting Factory, Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona

Michael Jackson and Barbara Hinkley.

When Rosenberg's New State Lighting opened for business in Phoenix at Washington Street and Central Avenue, the name was actually slightly premature — Arizona would not become a state for another two years.

In 1910, lighting was not the fundamental décor feature it is today. In fact, Barbara Hinkley, whose father William Hinkley founded the predecessor company to what is now Hinkley's Lighting Factory, recalls there were fewer than a dozen suppliers, and "lighting" consisted of basic flat fixtures for bedrooms and bathrooms, and a U-shaped one for over the bathroom mirror. Variety? "You could get brass trim or chrome trim," says Barbara Hinkley. "It was very unimaginative."

Lighting was only a small part of the business. Electricity was fairly new to Phoenix, and Rosenberg's did contract wiring, along with appliance repair and motor re-wiring. Lighting fixtures occupied a small balcony on the store's mezzanine.

William Hinkley worked for Rosenberg in the appliance department. Feeling that the demand for lighting would grow with Phoenix's impending population explosion, he pushed to expand that department. Rosenberg made him manager of it. When Rosenberg died, his widow sold each department to its respective manager, and lighting was spun off into its own orbit.

Today, the main Hinkley's showroom in central Phoenix is only four miles north of the original store location, but Barbara Hinkley recalls her mother's stunned reaction when she was told, in 1960, that the store was being moved. "She almost had a stroke," Hinkley says with a laugh. "She said, 'Nobody's going to drive that far out of town to buy a fixture.'"

In the years since, Hinkley's has steadily expanded, taking over adjacent shop spaces as they became available and opening a second location in the Scottsdale Airpark to meet the constantly growing demand. "Now," says current owner Michael Jackson, "light is the finishing touch in the house." Jackson, whose history with the company goes back 31 years to his after-school job as a teenager, has guided the store to a sales increase of 500 percent since he bought the company in the late 1990s.

"The trend now is looking for unique products and for people who will service the products," says Jackson. Seven years ago, he opened a factory in the store's Scottsdale location; and now, in addition to selling and installing lighting fixtures, Hinkley's designs and manufactures them. There is an approximately 12-week turnaround. "We're always here to service what we sell, and we don't discontinue items."

Variety in lighting fixtures is the key to Hinkley's many decades of success.

Jackson's latest addition to Hinkley's is a 4,000-square-foot showroom dedicated to high-tech contemporary lighting, adjacent to the main one in central Phoenix. The demand is high for contemporary, Jackson observes, but he also notes, "People are more interested in what they like rather than what goes with the rest of the house. For instance, they'll mix contemporary with Old World."

The Old World style first came to Hinkley's via an unlikely source: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. Placing the date in the late 1950s, Barbara Hinkley recalls how MGM held an auction that went on for six weeks as the studio sold costumes, vehicles and home furnishings that had been used in its movies. "We bought chandeliers — real antiques," says Hinkley, "and sold them before we got them home, just from pictures."

Customer response triggered further vendor response, and Barbara and William Hinkley began regular sorties to Europe to find antique lighting. What is now done by e-mail or phone required, at that time, "…crawling around old buildings finding these wonderful things," she recalls.

Electronic communication has made finding fine fixtures cleaner, easier and faster — if less romantic. Other changes wrought by technology are found in today's fixture designs and in the lighting itself. Emphasis on "green" building has seen a push from incandescent to compact fluorescent light bulbs; but Jackson points out that, while CFLs save energy, they contain a lot of mercury, which makes proper disposal a concern. He anticipates an increasing use of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as a light source. "It has longer life, it doesn't give off heat, the light can be directed better, and it is programmable," he says.

Offering courtesy to the trade, Jackson also offers designers, builders and architects tours of Hinkley's factory facilities as well as information about the different types of light. "It's important to understand what the different colors of light do to metal finishes, wood surfaces and granite surfaces," says Jackson. "Incandescent light will kill a white surface, while color-corrected white light will wash out a bronze surface."

The 10 suppliers from the company's earliest days have increased to several hundred, and the lighting industry has incorporated such technological changes as fiber optics and remote controls. But for Barbara Hinkley, the most remarkable change is in the looks. "It's so exciting," she says, "to see the tremendous variety of styles and colors that are available today."

Hinkley's Lighting Factory, 4620 N. Central Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85012, (602) 279-6267; Hinkley's Custom Lighting, 15023 N. 73rd St., Ste. 101, Scottsdale, AZ 85260, (480) 948-8799; The Studio, 4600 N. Central Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85012, (602) 279-6267; or www.hinkleyslighting.com.