Company Report: Christie Lites
Christie Lites Former musician Huntly Christie has built his stage lighting business Christie Lites into one of Canada's largest, with nine locations across North America and more on the way...

What do you do when the band breaks up?

If you are Huntly Christie, founder and CEO of Christie Lites, you don't go looking for an insurance industry job. Rather you look at the skills you have learned and use those to develop a niche business that keeps you in the game.

Christie is the namesake for his company Christie Lites, which he founded in Toronto in 1985 after realizing that perhaps his dream of being a successful drummer may not have been in the cards.

However, as with many musicians working the club circuit, Christie spent probably more time packing, unpacking and setting up the band's lighting and sound equipment for each gig than he did playing drums. From this experience of handling the myriad production details that go into playing a show, Christie took the skills he had developed and set his sights on the stage lighting industry.

From his dad's small garage, in 1985, the 25 year-old Christie launched what he says was the only company in the Toronto area dedicated exclusively to stage lighting.

Maintaining such a narrow focus on one aspect of the stage production market, says the company's website, facilitated the company's growth to the point that, within 13 years Christie Lites became one of Canada's largest stage lighting companies.

Today, Christie Lites focuses on rentals and production for theater, concert, tradeshow, TV & film, industrial, and special event productions.

The company's tradeshow and industrial work is primarily for companies seeking creative and innovative ways to highlight products. Theater productions the company has worked on include Hair, Cats, Man of Lamancha, and Jesus Christ Superstar.

Concerts the company has supplied lighting for include The Goo Goo Dolls, Barenaked Ladies, Norah Jones, and Sarah McLachlan, among others.

TV and film work includes Deal or No Deal Canada, the Juno Awards, Catwoman and All That Glitters. Special events include Rolling Thunder, Youth Talent Search, The Royal Conservatory, the King Tut Exhibit, and the National Gallery of Canada.

"Our target clients are lighting designers," says Christie.

"Essentially, we are a trade operating in a wholesale environment.
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