CEO Philip Hernandez’s focus on innovation helps guide the lighting manufacturer
by Jordan Zauha
“I like to say that we make very small things, but we have big ideas,” says Philip Hernandez. As CEO of Gantom Lighting & Controls, he understands the important role lighting equipment plays in creating the perfect environment for attractions, theme parks, museums and more. Gantom’s incredibly small, low-voltage lighting fixtures have become staples at Disney and Universal theme parks, and even earned a Thea Award for Six Flags Magic Mountain’s JUSTICE LEAGUE™: Battle for Metropolis.
The company’s success, in part, can be attributed to a focus on product development and innovation, based on direct feedback from their expanding roster of clients. “As a manufacturer, we don’t always know exactly where our product ends up,” explains Hernandez. “That’s why we work closely with distributors, integrators, and designers to understand how we can make things better and easier for them.” The current focus for Hernandez’s team is standardizing product lines – part of the larger effort to ensure Gantom remains responsive to market needs. Hernandez’s forward-thinking approaches to running the business have been a source of strength for the company, keeping staff employed throughout the pandemic and setting Gantom up for continued growth.
Bringing a career into focus
Innovative entrepreneurship has been a theme of Hernandez’s entire career, which began to take shape after annual family visits to Disneyland. Among his favorite attractions was Haunted Mansion Holiday, an annual seasonal overlay introduced in 2001 that integrates stories from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas into the classic dark ride.
Inspired by this Halloween twisted classic and Universal Orlando Resort’s Halloween Horror Nights, Hernandez developed a love for experiential storytelling and, particularly, haunted attractions. “All my favorite memories were made in theme parks or in haunted houses,” he notes.
He started by creating elaborate home haunts, eventually growing to the point of filing city permits due to popularity. It was during this time that Hernandez noticed a lack of information regarding haunt suppliers, designers, and operators. Sensing an entrepreneurial opportunity, he founded the Haunted Attraction Network (HAN). As the production and its audience grew, Hernandez interviewed high profile and award-winning entities. This was how Hernandez first met Gantom in 2016.
HAN started as a podcast but swiftly expanded to a website, email newsletters, multiple social media channels, and print magazines. Today, the HAN podcast has over 1,000 episodes with over 10,000 monthly downloads and has expanded heavily into video with 50 million views in 2023.
Founded in 2010 by Quan Gan and Jerry Dong, Gantom’s small intelligent spotlights, a must-have for space- constrained environments, had already become a favorite for haunts and Halloween attractions.
Hernandez hit it off with the fellow entrepreneurs and during a subsequent conversation, Gan floated an offer to Hernandez: become marketing chief promoting Gan’s latest offering: ZTAG – a gun-free laser tag product. As a parent Gan drew inspiration from his young children to develop a game without the use of screens or gun-based gameplay. ZTAG’s wearables provide tactile feedback for play and learning, all without the need for direct contact. Getting the word out on this latest venture was imperative. Hernandez had already done exactly that, promoting not only his own venture but an entire industry through HAN. That skill was precisely what Gan and ZTAG needed.
Hernandez started on a contract basis and then moved over to ZTAG full-time. He and Gan traveled to over two dozen trade shows during a single year, displaying ZTAG’s play capabilities. From there, Hernandez’s role expanded, first including marketing for Gantom and eventually taking on business development. “I just kept collecting hats,” Hernandez says.
Hernandez takes the helm
Eventually, Hernandez traded in all those hats for one big hat when Gan asked Hernandez to become Gantom’s chief executive officer. As co-founder, Gan would still be involved with major company decisions, but his focus would shift to growing his latest venture.
Hernandez now stood as the head of a small global team alongside Dong, its other co-founder and chief technology officer who led product development in China. For the company to continue its string of innovative product launches, Hernandez recognized how important it was to unite the company.
“I made the executive decision before COVID to shift into a remote company. It was an incredibly challenging process,” recalls Hernandez. Tackling the obstacles of time zones, translation and management software, he crafted a culture focused on efficiency and effective communication. Through trial and error along with reliable software, he aligned teams on both sides of the world. Hernandez drafted new KPIs for the company, developed norms and rules for the new communication structures, and built in a development-focused culture of regular check-ins.
Perfectly positioned
In 2020, the company, now headquartered in Orlando, was in the middle of its conversion with fully remote meetings and an integrated management structure when suddenly the world came to a halt.
“Nothing could have prepared us for the pandemic. We had a bit of a leg up because we already had a remote culture,” says Hernandez. Despite the uncertainty and the unprecedented nature of the impact of COVID-19 on the attractions industry, Hernandez and Gantom leadership doubled down on their people.
A two-pronged approach was quickly adopted. For the human element, the company maintained high morale by way of remote “coffee chats” and social events. Meanwhile, executive leadership developed a crisis plan, ensuring the company’s sustainability. KPIs were updated, and weekly leadership strategy meetings ensured the company remained agile as it developed its long-term plan. The executive leadership team went so far as to forgo salary to guarantee staff retention.
Through proactive internal development, Hernandez laid the foundation for the company’s future. Gantom built out and refined its customer relations management plan. The sales team learned OBS, recorded product videos, and developed an entirely new method of virtual demos. Concurrently, the product development team in China continued its technological innovations. During the lockdown period, the team created the company’s smallest framing projector to date: Juni.
The remote culture of the company, championed and developed by Hernandez, was refined and solidified. The maximization of productivity and unification of the U.S. and Chinese halves blossomed significantly during this period.
Innovation is not a one-time event
Over the years, a new insight emerged for the compact lighting supplier. Originally, Gantom assumed that their products would not be used in place of regular fixtures. But through his contacts with designers and integrators, Hernandez noticed that its lights were often being hung right beside larger fixtures. That realization led to an effort to make Gantom simpler to integrate with other products. “Making installation easier is the goal,” says Hernandez.
“Our fixtures are low voltage and the ‘brains’ for our equipment are in the fixture itself,” explains Hernandez. “All it needs is power and data.” For 2024, Gantom’s proprietary cable system is being replaced with a standard CAT6 system, allowing for easier integration into lighting systems as well as reduced costs for buyers. This alignment with the industry standard showcases Gantom’s commitment to simplicity for its customers while underscoring its confident position in the field.
“This is an important shift for the company,” explains Hernandez. “We are implementing these changes as a direct result of customer feedback, while we continue to listen to our clients for ways to make our products even better.” The company has also developed an adapter for its products to connect with low voltage track, with a high voltage track adapter coming soon. Gantom will showcase the improved cable system and adapters at both LDI 2024 (December 8-10, Las Vegas) and IAAPA Expo (November 19-22, Orlando).
A foundation for the future
Hernandez is proud of the work his team has done to grow Gantom’s footprint and reputation. “The culture of innovation and support that we’ve built will serve us well as we look to the future,” says Hernandez. Gantom products have become a themed entertainment industry staple. Because of this industry confidence in its products, the company now aims to reliably feed the growing number of attractions and renovations with its equipment.
As proof, Hernandez points to the increasingly varied and extensive list of new facilities utilizing Gantom’s products, including the Louvre, SeaWorld Abu Dhabi, Broadway shows, museums, zoos, and even the recently opened dark ride Spongebob’s Crazy Carnival Ride.
“Our fixtures are so small they are often hard to see when installed,” says Hernandez. “But chances are if you’ve seen light coming from a small space, it’s a Gantom product.” The
comparison to Hernandez’s own role is too obvious to not point out. As powerhouses of innovation working behind the scenes, both Gantom and Hernandez have a bright future ahead.
Visit Gantom’s booth at LDI (#2110) and IAAPA Expo (#2072) or schedule a meeting by emailing [email protected] or [email protected]. •
