About us

1 minute read

Factorylux was co-founded in 2010 by MD Sophie Gollop and Stanley Wilson, working from the kitchen table of their London flat.

In the 10+ years since, we relocated to the Yorkshire Pennines and grew into a small team who specialise in sustainable design and manufacturing.

Supported by architects, designers and building engineers, we’ve developed a new kind of architectural lighting. Our science-based approach achieves a smaller environmental footprint than was possible before.

All the light fittings and lighting track we manufacture today are entirely plastic-free, paint-free and adhesive-free (excl. electronics). They're also more affordable and, most importantly, they make closed-loop Circular Economy possible. It's a major first for the lighting industry 🥇. 

How did we get here?....

Factorylux MD Sophie Gollop walking with kids in Pennine snow Factorylux MD Sophie Gollop & kids in the Yorkshire Pennines


Code red

On August 9th, 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its assessment of the climate crisis. The 4000 page breakdown of the physical science was famously summarised by UN Secretary-General António Guterres as ‘a code red for humanity’.

This and other calls to action from the scientific community affected us deeply, but clashed horribly with the inactivity we saw at ground level with our own eyes and - to be absolutely transparent - even in our own business 😔.

The disconnect left us feeling conflicted, especially when trying to explain it all to our kids. Psychologists call this phenomenon 'cognitive dissonance', maybe you've experienced it yourself? (if so, you've come to the right place, we're CD specialists 😅) 

 


"In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information
and the mental toll of it"

- Wikipedia


Sustainability has always been integral to our work, but our achievements were not at a level that matched the scale of the problem or at the theoretical maximum we could achieve. There was room for improvement - we knew it and we could no longer ignore it.

 

Returnable glass milk bottles on a stone step, a circular economy closed-loop in action

Returnable milk bottles - still a common sight in Yorkshire 


As kids we’d loved returnable glass bottles for fizzy pop (soda), such a brilliantly simple idea and collecting them was a way for us to make a few pence. Later in life we learned these are called 'closed-loops' (when producers take back their own products to reprocess and return them directly to the market).

Could 'closed-loop' principles be applied to a more complex product, such as architectural lighting? We set out to find out. Several years and a house sale later (engineering R&D is eye-wateringly expensive) we've established a framework for the first ever lighting closed-loop 🙌.

 

irn bru returnable glass bottles for closed loop circular economy soda or fizzy pop

 

Putting it into words

The basic idea of a closed-loop is simple, but making it happen for architectural lighting is - unsurprisingly - a bit complicated. First and foremost, the story links at the bottom of this page👇 document the nitty-gritty of how we make a closed-loop possible. 

They explain how Factorylux components are made, brought together, assembled, finished, packed and transported—to better understand how they facilitate true circularity. This is real life storytelling about how we do it today, not a fictional account of what we might achieve one day in the future.
Documenting the factual details of our work is important to push back on 'greenwash', which has become a major obstacle to sustainability.

We hope our stories inspire you to gather and organise your own sustainability thoughts and that you'll feel all the more balanced for it as we have 😇 .
 

Industrial Revolution

It’s easy to think of closed-loops as something that will require years of research and evaluation to become deliverable. In reality, the solution is very simple: make manufacturers legally responsible and financially accountable for what they produce, from inception to end-of-life.

Lighting industry waste is a lighting industry problem. Our stories are proof, or thereabouts, that if we are given no alternative, us manufacturers will easily figure out what to do about it. It’s time to shut out the noise of lighting corporations and their lobbyists, to unlock closed-loop Circular Economy and realise the true potential of the lighting industry.

This single, simple truth is the conclusion of all our work on sustainability and the fundamental principle that underpins everything we do.

We need a new Industrial Revolution, the makers must also become the unmakers.

So let’s get on... 

Our stories: 

1 - About us (you are here!)

  • How we got started.

2 - Closed-loop Circular Economy 

  • The how and why of our manufacturing methodology.

3 - Stone-Rumbled™

  • The most sustainable surface finish ever - explained.

4 - Make-Unmake™

  • Mono-materials are what make a closed-loop possible.

5 - Magic-Packaging™

  • Measure everything that leaves a factory, not just the product.

6 - Magic-Paint™

  • Don't read this if you want to continue using regular paint.

7 - Factorylux Mission

  • Why we exist. Where we are going.