I'm not a spokesperson for Harbour Lights, although I do receive compensation from them for my role as Webmaster of the website.

I'm certainly not privy to any financial information about this privately-owned company.

Nancy Younger was in town Sunday and we enjoyed a very candid story about the early days of the company -- both before and since 'Harbour Lights'.

As many of you know, they operated out of a two-car garage, converted to office space for a number of years and Bill and Nancy (later Nancy alone) would traverse the 11 Western states calling on David Winter dealers (and prospective dealers) during a 5,000 mile quarterly trip.

Lighthouses offered a new idea in the late 1980s and I doubt that they envisioned a day when there weren't any more (significant) ones to make.

But GLOWs provided an answer to the arising question in the mid-1990s of "What do we do when the best-known lighthouses have already been made and retired."

I don't have any way of confirming this, but it's my guess that GLOWs and Little Lights have kept this company in a comparatively strong financial condition, enabling it to survive tough economic times (for collectible stores and manufacturers) while their core product line potential would have otherwise gotten significantly smaller.

GLOWs and Little Lights and Guardians fill different niches than do the limited editions. I doubt that the Younger Family ever thought that the 'hard core' Harbour Lights limited edition collectors would become avid collectors of these alternative products (Or Sky-Bound balloons.)

But I think that they believed the tourist and locals around the better-known lighthouses would be potential purchasers for these lines.

As we've discussed in the past, the local and/or tourist market made up some percentage of LE buyers in the past. This group is unaware of the appreciated value of what they have and so the number of potential pieces available to the 'serious collector' is reduced. At least this was so in the past.

But with the option of GLOWs, LLOM, and Guardians, some of this local/tourist market is satisfied and no longer competes with LE collectors, making more of an LE edition available to the 'serious collectors'

For the LE collector, Harbour Lights has kept prices lower this year, reduced edition sizes to nothing over 5,500 pieces (including Christmas at 5,000).

Again, I'm not privy to the decision-making process, but I certainly believe that they are trying very hard to balance the need to survive with the necessary actions to keep their base of lighthouse collectors satisfied and happy.

From all that I've heard, the Sky-Bound Balloons products are doing very well. For those of us who love LE lighthouses this is good news.

Dick mentioned that a number of LLOM have been made that have not been made as LEs. This is primarily because the cost of sculpting and getting these pieces into production is much less than the similar start-up costs for an LE. HL can take a chance and provide a product that potentially has a smaller market with this product line.

The Guardian line is clearly an attempt to fulfill the needs of collectors of the defunct Lefton line of ceramic lighthosues. ("Left In The Dark?")