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    Eaton Execs Offer Insight into Plans for Spin-Off of Lighting Business

    May 23, 2019
    Eaton Corp.’s lighting business continues to invest in R&D as the unit prepares for a spin-off later this year.

    Curt Hutchins, who moved over from the hydraulics unit to group president of Eaton Lighting Division earlier this year and manages the company’s IPO,  said Eaton Lighting  plans to unveil more than 100 new products this year after introducing 85 new products last year. Hutchins and Kraig Kasler, the unit’s president, gave a news briefing to a group of business press editors at Lightfair 2019 in Philadelphia on May 22.

    Kasler said the company’s lighting business has three core areas of focus:

    • Contractor-oriented lighting products designed for ease of installation and “stock-and-flow” products for electrical distributors for common lighting applications.
    • Specification-grade products for higher-end applications.
    • Connected lighting products, the smallest but fastest-growing piece of the business.

    Another Eaton executive said today’s lighting market is split pretty evenly between contractor/distributor-oriented products and specification-grade products. Hutchins said today’s lighting business reminds him of the consumer products industry — where he held several executive posts before joining Eaton — because of the rapid pace of innovation. Eaton announced the spin-off of its lighting business, which generated $1.8 billion in revenues back in March. The company had acquired the lighting unit of Cooper Industries in 2012.

    About the Author

    Jim Lucy | Editor-in-Chief of Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing

    Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 40 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing newsletter, and as a contributing writer for EC&M magazine During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement.

    Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling  and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted with his wife and three sons in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 30 years. 

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