Acuity Brands

The roots of Acuity Brands date back to 1919 when Isadore M. Weinstein founded the Atlanta Linen Supply company in 1919. Weinstein had previously been employed in the towel supply business in Cleveland, and after serving in World War I, he started his own business renting towels, uniforms, and linens. He opened several locations throughout the south, changing the name to the Southern Linen Service Corporation in 1920. The company went public in 1928 as National Linen Service Corporation and continued to grow, eventually expanding to markets in the southwest and west coast. By 1944, the company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.Following World War II, Weinstein's son, Milton, had taken over the company. In the 1950s, National Linen faced an antitrust suit due to its dominance in the otherwise fragmented linens industry. The suit was settled in 1956, and in an effort to assuage future antitrust concerns, the company began to diversify. National Linen's first acquisition outside of linens and uniforms was Zep Manufacturing Company, an Atlanta-based chemical and janitorial supply manufacturer, in 1962. Zep became synonymous with NSI's chemical division, acquiring Selig Chemical Industries in 1968 and several smaller acquisitions throughout the 1970s and 1980s. To better reflect its new variety of business units, National Linen became National Service Industries in 1964. Zep co-founder Erwin Zaban, who had stayed on following the company's acquisition and was also Weinstein's neighbor, took over NSI's operation in 1966.In 1969, NSI acquired Lithonia Lighting Inc., a light fixture manufacturer founded in Georgia in 1946, and established a lighting division. Along with the chemical division that grew out of the Zep acquisition, the lighting division that grew out of the Lithonia Lighting acquisition formed the foundation for what would eventually become Acuity Brands. NSI acquired several other lighting manufacturers over the next 30 years, the largest of which occurred in 1999, when Ohio-based Holophane Corporation, a large outdoor and industrial lighting manufacturer, was purchased. Zaban continued NSI's new expansion strategy of acquiring profitable companies without much consideration for synergy among the company's increasing number of business units throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Six business units remained at the core of NSI's operations: linens, chemicals, lighting, insulation, envelopes, and printing. However, the total number of business units ebbed and flowed throughout this period as Zaban acquired companies in a variety of other industries and divested as soon as they became unprofitable.By the 1990s, NSI's lighting and chemical divisions made up more than half of the company's revenues and operating incomes combined, and both divisions were still rapidly growing. In 1992, NSI added Graham Group, Europe's second-largest specialty chemical manufacturer at the time, and Kleen Canada to its chemical division. NSI added outdoor lighting company Infranor Canada in 1995 and invested in a fluorescent lighting manufacturing facility in Monterrey, Mexico that would serve the entire North American market. The chemical division expanded further in 1997 with the acquisition of Enforcer Products and Pure Corporation.In 2001, National Service Industries announced it would combine the lighting and chemical divisions and spin off that combined entity as a separate, publicly traded company. Initially incorporated as L&C Spinco in June 2001, it was renamed Acuity Brands in November of the same year. James S. Balloun, who had taken over as CEO of NSI in the mid-1990s, moved with the spinoff to serve as the president, CEO, and chairman of the board. In part due to the weak economy that spurred NSI to spin off the new company in the first place, Acuity Brands struggled in its first few years. Balloun retired in September 2004 and was replaced by Vernon J. Nagel, who had joined the firm as executive vice president and chief financial officer in December 2001. Beginning in 2005, Nagel led a restructuring effort that resulted in splitting Acuity Brands into two distinct, publicly traded brands in July 2007. The company's chemical division, Acuity Specialty Products, spun off as Zep, Inc. and included the Zep, Enforcer, and Selig brands. The remaining Acuity Brands, Inc. became the holding company for Acuity Brands Lighting which included the Lithonia Lighting, Holophane, Peerless, and Mark Architectural brands, among others.Nagel's tenure as CEO saw the transition of the lighting industry to LED lighting as well as the rise of smart lighting and the internet of things. Acuity grew with these changes in technology, launching the Atrius IoT brand in 2017 after the acquisitions of Sensor Switch and organic creation of brands such as nLight and ROAM. After 16 years as president and CEO, Nagel stepped aside into an executive chairman role, and Neil Ashe was named the new head of the company.