Business View - June 2015 41
Ron at the helm. The company soon needed a bigger
space, so Ron moved it to a new location in Stream-
wood, Illinois, where it remains today. ACA then cre-
ated a sister company down the street (Lawrence &
Frederick) to coordinate smaller projects, and togeth-
er, the new business put a dynamic executive team
in place to guide the company through the next forty
years.
No business can succeed without adapting, and as
overseas competitors jumped into the industry that
Ron created, it became apparent that the success of
ACA would be built upon a finely tuned mixture of old
school ideals and new school verticals.
Today, ACA is North America’s largest producer of an-
odized aluminum and metallic sheet lighting products.
It is also the leading, ISO certified, technology provider
in this area. “Our biggest market has always been light-
ing,” says Ken Alessi, the President and COO of ACA.
“We export all over the world - US and Canada, Mexico,
South America, as well as emerging business in Asia.”
The company focuses on several other areas, as well:
architectural and specialty, automotive coil, and solar.
However, ACA is not without the type of challenges that
many 21st century companies must face. New and
emerging technologies have killed as many ventures
as they have created, but for ACA, the competitive re-
sponse was simple and direct: find new ventures, re-
build, and repeat.
“As lighting switches to LED, the automotive market
has become very exciting for us,” continues Alessi,
“specifically in regards to starting from scratch and
moving forward. Expanding to different types of appli-
cations in the auto market is the quickest way we can
expand our market share.”
MANUFACTURING
