It is always nice to see another local green business become successful.
Sacramento-based Sunoptics enjoys skylight success with Wal-Mart
By Jim Downing - jdowning@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, March 2, 2008
Thirty years ago, Jerry Blomberg bet his career on the idea that he could sell sunlight.
Business was slow for almost two decades until he caught the eye of a very big customer: Wal-Mart.
Starting in the mid-1990s, the world's largest retailer began to "daylight" its new stores across the country, installing skylights – mostly those made by Blomberg's firm, Sunoptics Prismatic Skylights Inc. – and turning off electric lights during the day. Daylighting cuts each store's electric bill by as much as 15 percent, according to Wal-Mart officials, and has helped the company build a reputation as an environmental leader.
Today, the roughly 400,000 Sunoptics skylights in Wal-Mart stores across the country save enough electricity to shut down a midsized power plant, Sunoptics officials say. The payoff: Last month, Wal-Mart agreed to make Sun- optics its exclusive North American skylight supplier.
For Blomberg, 82, who still comes to work every day at Sunoptics' south Sacramento factory, that's sweet validation. When he started the company in 1978, fresh off a split from his family's window business, he wasn't sure how he'd ever turn a profit.
"We didn't have a great business plan," he said.
"(The plan) was to figure out how to sell the world on daylighting," he said.
