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GOLD Coast company Aqualuma is helping Americans see the light.
The manufacturer has overhauled its marine lighting operations in the United States and has doubled productivity.
Director Carl Amor says actively chasing business in the US has reaped rewards with month-on-month improvement ever since
November.
“We have changed the way people do business in the marine industry in America," says Amor.
“People would tell us the way business was ‘supposed to be done’ and we listened for a while. But I have found that the way the system works there is that people wait for things to come along to them. We very much have a ‘let’s go out there and find it’ attitude.”
Aqualuma turns over almost $3 million a year and Amor says there are some good signs of growth. He expects a 15 per cent increase in revenue by the end of the financial year, jumping to 22 per cent by the end of December.
There are promising noises coming out of the US about a recovery, which Amor believes is happening. But he doesn’t put Aqualuma’s success in the country down to the turnaround.
“The world is starting to turn, but I don’t attribute that to our success in America, because that was a case of us turning the market, rather than the market turning for us,” he says.
The marine lighting manufacturer recently opened a new warehouse in Florida and plans to move into the lucrative warehouse lighting sector to further boost revenue.
“There are huge power savings to be had compared to what is used in most warehouses today – LED lights can lead to a 60 per cent saving in power consumption,” says Amor.
Aqualuma started in 2005, and now exports to 42 countries, with all its products manufactured on the Gold Coast. New Gen III lighting products were released in November, followed by the Series 12 in February this year.
The company has been a sponsor of the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show for the past two years and won the top
Australian Marine Export Award last year.
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