DLG Lighting Company lights up Santa Barbara one lantern at a time
Jimmy Rickard is the founder and owner of DLG Lighting Company Santa Barbara Lighting. SOE HAN THA/NEWS-PRESS
This local lighting company has its sights set on Santa Barbara and more.
DLG Lighting Company Santa Barbara Lighting is lighting up the hallways, backyards and front steps of homes in Santa Barbara and beyond.
The company is the brainchild of Jimmy Rickard, who claims ancestry to one of the founding families of Santa Barbara, the De la Guerras. The company’s name pays tribute to this ancestry.
Prior to DLG Lighting Co., Mr. Rickard worked as a real estate developer for about two decades. In the dark aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, he began to look toward lighting.
“In 2009, I started my quest for high-end quality lighting companies based on the fact that I really couldn’t find what I was looking for when I was building and developing homes,” said Mr. Rickard. “I sat down with a local architect (Studio 7’s owner Britton Jewett) that I was a building a property with at the time; he and I collaborated on creating a clean, authentic design catalog of lighting.”
The outcome was a collection of indoor and exterior lighting, a collection that includes more than 20 products whose prices range from $900 to $50,000 each, according to Mr. Rickard.
The price tag includes local artisans’ crafty work and heavy-gauge metal. Each lantern, according to Mr. Rickard, can weigh about 30 pounds, and the company’s designs have attracted clientele from across the country.
“We provide lighting in the Hamptons, Florida, Los Angeles, San Francisco,” Mr. Rickard said. “It’s certainly lucrative.”
Mr. Rickard told the News-Press that since its founding in 2014, DLG Lighting Co. has earned revenue of seven figures.
Moving forward, Mr. Rickard plans on maintaining the company’s base at his home Santa Barbara while “we’re taking Santa Barbara out to the rest of the country.”
The desire to bring Santa Barbara to the rest of the country stems from Mr. Rickard’s grandfather and former mayor of Santa Barbara, John T. Rickard.
“Everywhere I’ve gone all over the world, people recognize Santa Barbara, and that’s something my grandfather instilled in me.”
This inherited pride for Santa Barbara reverberates beyond the county through the company’s products. The namesake lantern, the De la Guerra Arm Mount, for example, is an Old World-inspired, Mediterranean-style design on a similar theme as the architecture echoing throughout Santa Barbara.
Those interested in an item on https://www.dlglighting.com/ can contact the company to schedule a viewing appointment at 112 E. De la Guerra St., which also houses Studio 7.
