Page 123 - Lighting Magazine January 2019

If you’re a resident of South Carolina, you prob- ably recognize Jan Clouse’s face from such high-pro le regional consumer magazines as Charleston Style & Design and Mount Pleasant magazine or in articles from JacksonBuilt Cus-
tom Homes and Charleston Post Courier.
Or perhaps you’ve seen her lighting designs cel- ebrated in the pages of Coastal Living, Southern Living, and Verandah. Clouse is on speed dial when it comes to designing rooms for famous showhouses across the country as well as the personal homes of high-pro le one-percenters. (She receives personal notes of appreciation from enthusiastic clients such as power couple Barbra Streisand and James Bro-
lin, among others.)
When asked the secret of her success, Clouse
quickly responds, “I uncover rocks.” Her tenacity to leave no stone unturned in her search to nd something unique and gorgeous for her clients has led to raving fans, who naturally become repeat customers...as do their neighbors, family members, and friends.
Born and raised in the Charleston area, Clouse has a history of using her gumption and spunk to succeed. When she was in her teens, she saved the money she earned babysi ing so she could buy fabric to make her own clothes.
A few years later, she taught herself how to re n- ish furniture. “I’d buy a piece, re nish it, and sell it to buy two more,” she notes. This led her to buy and renovate a series of homes back before HGTV made the concept popular.
As an executive at a shipping company whose work took her all over the globe to negotiate deals, Clouse entered the lighting industry by happen- stance in 1999. An avid runner, she visited a local lighting showroom immediately a er a run to in- quire about gas lanterns for her new home, which was in the rst community in the area to have natu- ral gas available.
“I stood there with my hair in a ponytail and my exercise out t on and the salesperson took a look at me and [made a comment like I wouldn’t be able to a ord it] and turned her back to help someone else,” she recalls.
That rude experience launched Clouse on a mis- sion to nd high-quality, handcra ed lanterns on her own — which she did, discovering a li le-known cra sman in a di erent part of the state who was making exactly what she was looking for.
homes slated to be built in her area, Clouse asked if he could manufacture larger quantities. A er get- ting permission to sell his lanterns (which weren’t being sold anywhere but in his small workshop), Clouse loaded up her trunk. “We’re in the light- ing business,” she told her husband that night. “I thought you were in the shipping business,” he answered. Not anymore.
Clouse quit her job, o cially established a business called Carolina Lanterns, got a website domain, took photos of the lanterns, had a graphic artist design a logo, and drove to Staples to create makeshi catalogs. “I’d print pages all night long,” she says. “I’d run dozens of copies and then sleep while they were printing out, wake up, and run some more.” That was the easy part.
sHe likes A cHAllenge
The next step was devising a list of potential customers. “I made appointments with interior de- signers, architects, and developers of subdivisions for their preferred builder lists,” she recounts. With natural gas just beginning to take o in the area, the market for beautiful gas lanterns was ripe. Clouse started a ending weekly building meetings and joined the chapters of the major interior design and home building groups.
“My husband came home one night to discover I had changed our phone number,” Clouse notes. This was the pre-cellphone era, so their home phone was the only way customers could reach Clouse — and now it was ringing constantly. She
Jan Clouse holds
up a recent guide to Charleston’s tourist a ractions that is con- veniently displayed next to the front door inside Carolina Lanterns.
Iron MavEN
Inspiration struck. Calculating the amount of
January 2019 | enLIGHTenment MagazIne 121