Growing pains have forced South Carolina-based Lumvatech to move into a new building.

The manufacturer of ultra-thin LED backlighting panels recently leased 3,500 square feet in a facility in Williamston, South Carolina, about 15 miles from where it was founded in 2011 in Anderson, South Carolina.

“The benefit of this for us is it gives us the opportunity to continue this insane rapid growth mode without having to move again,” says Marty Proctor, Lumvatech’s director of new business and market development.

It relocated in October, only a couple of months after the purchase of two new high-speed panel cutters had doubled its production capacity – the second time in six months the company had doubled capacity. The new 3,500-square-foot space is in a 20,000-square-foot building that offers the potential for further growth in the future, Proctor says.

“We have basically been, for the last 10 quarters that I am here – we are growing 100 percent quarter on quarter,” Proctor says. “So we’re basically doubling the business every three months.”

The company’s move also allows it better access to a nearby interstate and an airport, along with dock height in its shipping and receiving warehouse, something the company did not enjoy before, he says.

Lumvatech serves essentially two markets with its products, Proctor says: One is the backlighting the company makes for user interfaces – kitchen appliances, medical devices, automotive – the company makes the light panels that enable those applications.

For the sign and digital graphics market, the company does backlighting for point of purchase, point of sale and advertising pieces.

“The channel that we go through is (Sign & Digital Graphics’) target audience,” Proctor says. “We go through printers, cardboard guys … some of these are free-standing displays; we’ve done aisle violators, we’ve done just ordinary POP or POS, like cigarette display advertising, stuff like that.

“The market strategy that we’re typically employing is, the printers, and the plastic fabricators, and the cardboard box guys – they have the relationship with the brand, or with the agency that provides to the brand, and all we do is enable them to add lighting to a display.”

Proctors says his company has carved a niche in the highly competitive LED market because of two things: the simplicity of its products and the thinness.

“We are very thin – definitely less than an eighth of an inch thick; typically even way less than one-eighth, so it’s easy to put together – you don’t have this big clunky, heavy thing to deal with,” he says.

Lumvatech’s products can be found globally, Proctor says, although the majority of its customers are in North America.

The company employs about 20 people.