FRIENDSHIP

Founders pictured above (left to right): Bret Englander, Director of Sales and Marketing; Nick Sheridan, Director of Design; Dan Wacholder, Director of Engineering and Operations. 

With no backyards but access to beaches and idyllic doses of salt and sun, our business story began with the adventures of three boys. Laguna Beach’s creative culture and natural environment shaped our professional and aesthetic ideals. Looking back it’s now clear that our childhood projects and experiments grew into our best adventure yet: building Cerno.

BALANCE

We’re not in Milan, or New York — where a lot of the world’s modern design is birthed. Thousands of miles away, out here on the West Coast, we are free from that sphere of influence. And we cherish our independence. We lean into the unique environment, our friendship and the artistic and coastal communities that raised us..

BELIEF

Our drive and influences come from many different sources. One source that influenced all of us is Daniel’s late grandfather, Steve. Steve grew up on a remote homestead where the existence of most objects depended on people’s ability to create and fix them. For all of his 101 years, he embodied the saying “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Today we share his mentality with the rest of the Cerno team.

THE FIRST LIGHT

Now, for over a decade, we’ve been making modern fixtures. In 2009 we saw an opportunity. Lighting design and energy efficiency had been limited by 100 years of the traditional incandescent bulb. Fixtures designed in America but manufactured overseas often had frustrating quality flaws and were limited by the inherent disconnect in their design-prototyping-manufacturing process. The innovations in incandescent and LED lighting, new technologies started bringing potential for efficiency, quality and beauty that had yet to be thoroughly explored or developed. So we set out to design and build original fixtures right here in California.


WHAT WE DO TODAY


We design and build lighting in California with the finest craftsmanship and authentic materials. Our aesthetic is an intersection of modernism and contemporary design.
In addition to Cerno’s retail, decorative and architectural lines of modern lighting, Cerno has an art lighting brand that is currently making the most sophisticated picture light on the market.   Learn more at revelite.com.