Eden Prairie entrepreneur Joe Brady’s innovative lighting company is poised to really light up

By John Molene

For a guy with precious little schooling, and even less knowledge of the commercial lighting business, Joe Brady is doing all right.

And all by doing something as simple as changing a burned-out bulb.

Brady, a longtime Eden Prairie resident, is the owner of Reluminate Inc., an innovative indoor and outdoor commercial lighting business that has more than 2,500 customers and is growing fast.

Reluminate provides complete lighting management for commercial businesses, including providing licensed electricians, exterior and interior lighting system work, retrofitting, security and pole lights, sign maintenance and recycling.

“It’s all about getting out there 7 days a week, 12 to 15 hours a day,” he said. “It’s all about work 9/10 of the time. The other part is sometimes you get lucky.”

Brady has done both. He’s a marathon worker, and he’s gotten lucky by being in the right place at the right time, with the right product.

Brady’s long list of customers now includes businesses such as US Bank, Wells Fargo and United Properties and about 70 percent of the shopping centers in the Twin Cities, including Eden Prairie Center and the Mall of America.

Brady has grown his business with a combination of standout customer service, innovative ideas, a highly motivated workforce and a relentless work ethic.

Brady, 58, grew up in South Minneapolis. Later diagnosed with dyslexia, he quit school when he was 14 years old and starting working for a vending machine company.

Learning the business under mentor Tom Theisen, who owned Theisen Vending Co., Brady’s duties included filling vending machines with bubble gum and driving a company truck. Those jobs taught him valuable lessons about just how much hard work could accomplish.

“I’m a hustler,” Brady said. “Seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

“And you learn a lot when you’re out there on the street talking to people.”

After working for Theisen for more than 20 years, Brady has taken on a variety of other business projects.

He formed a company which built several cell phone towers in the later 1990s. Then, a friend who was failing in the lighting business asked Brady to come on board in 1999 and help the company regain its feet.

 “I bought a truck and I was in the lighting business,” Brady said.

Brady built his business the quintessential old-fashioned way – by hard work. Most days, he’s at work by 6 a.m. and often works until 10 or 11 at night.

Brady’s work method is outrageously simple – he would drive around, spot a business with a light or lights that weren’t working, then contact the manager or owner and make his pitch. Most of those pitches went right over the plate.

“I worked at it seven days a week, 24 hours a day,” Brady said. “I was always out there looking at lights.”

And while his friend is no longer with the company, Reluminate is thriving. Brady estimates the company did between $3 million and 4 million dollars worth of business last year, serving more than 2,500 customers, and the future growth is potentially off the charts.

Brady is big on getting his customers to retrofit their businesses with better quality T-8 fluorescent lighting and modern electronic ballast, both of which can add up to significant savings in electrical energy.

“I want to get people to think more green, and to reduce wattage consumption,” he said. “We do a lot of education.”

Brady said Reluminate is helping customers switch to the more environmentally friendly LED lighting, lights that while they initially cost more than standard bulbs, will pay for themselves quickly by using less energy and lasting longer.

Reluminate recently installed six LED lights in a pilot program in a parking lot at the Mall of America.

By switching to a more efficient lighting system, customers over the long haul can save 30 to 50 percent on their lighting costs, Brady said.

The company also offers complete security and pole light maintenance, sign maintenance and recycling services.

Most of Reluminate’s employees are licensed electricians, all of which drive specialized boom trucks and are trained to handle any and all commercial lightning situations.

“When we do the job, it’s done right,” he noted.

What is a little remarkable about this surge, is that Brady has overseen this growth of a thriving commercial lighting business with no training in, and little knowledge of the technological skills behind it.

 “I don’t know a thing about it,” he said about his skills as an electrician. “I don’t know how to put two wires together.”

What he does know is people, and how to make a business work.

The staff of Reluminate’s office, located in a White Bear Lake office park, is minimal – consisting mostly of Brady, his daughter and office manager Sharon Barthel. Brady was employing a pair of salesmen, but they didn’t get out in the field often enough to suit his taste and he cut both loose.

What has Brady most excited about the future is an avant-garde software program that allows individual businesses to determine and manage the status of their entire lightning systems.

 “Our software program is the best,” said Brady. “It lets a business completely manage its lighting. You can pull up all of the information and see what needs to be fixed, what needs to be replaced.”

The program lights glow green, yellow and red, and easily let the user know at a glance which lights and equipment are good, bad or about to go bad.

The secure online lighting system program can tell its users the status of every light, ballast, pole and line, when it was changed, and when it needs to be replaced. Before the software, system managers had to rely on sometime faulty memories, paper records or simply visual clues.

“We are the only ones that have this,” Brady said. “And it’s copyrighted and trademarked. We can bundle it and sell it at $10 to 20 grand to one customer. We’ve got some good things going. GE and Sylvania love this. Burger King and McDonald’s are interested. We’re taking baby steps. The big thing is putting everything together.”

Brady estimates the proprietary software program alone is worth $20 million, “on the low side.”

Customers appreciate the ability to electronically track their lightning system needs, and contact Reluminate for any needed maintenance with a simple e-mailed service request, said Barthel.

Service is then scheduled, usually for either that day, or the next.

 “We don’t lose business,” Brady said.

Brady and other Reluminate staff will pitch their innovative solutions to a gathering of 32 Minnesota cities later this month.

 “I’m good at talking,” Brady said. “I can use that in my presentation.”

Also is the works is a plan to franchise the Reluminate model to other companies throughout the United States.

“We’re considered to be the largest lighting company of this type in Minnesota and Wisconsin,” Brady said. “Within the next two years, I hope to have 2,000 trucks out there.

“I’ve got goals I want to meet, and I’ve got goals which are pretty aggressive,” he said. “My hobbies are work. I’m always thinking about it. I go snowmobiling, fishing. I play golf. But I like to work.”

Not bad for a guy who started with little more than one truck and some big dreams just a few years ago.

For more information on Reluminate, see www.reluminate.com [2].