How Lighthouse Co Scaled from Canada to the US with Zero Retail Experience

Sarah had spent her whole life preparing for medical school. Jason was building custom kitchens out of a converted plumbing supply shop in Lindsay, Ontario. Neither had any experience in home decor ecommerce. Today, Lighthouse Co carries over 20,000 SKUs across 60+ brands, serves interior designers across Canada, and just launched a dedicated US Shopify store to fuel its next phase of growth.

Their story is a masterclass in what happens when founders with zero industry experience apply relentless process improvement to a massive market opportunity.

A Throwaway Comment That Became a Business

The Lighthouse story actually starts in 2017, when Jason began flipping houses. After one property tied up his capital, he pivoted to what he loved most about renovations: high-end custom work. He started Lighthouse Cabinetry with no formal cabinet-making experience, hired a couple of woodworkers, and learned by doing.

Three years later, during the COVID pandemic, Sarah was tasked with picking out lighting for the home they were building together. With showrooms closed, she went down the rabbit hole of shopping for DTC lighting online and hit every pain point imaginable: antiquated websites, overwhelming catalogs, analysis paralysis from thousands of nearly identical options.

"Jason and I were driving one day and I just had this throwaway comment: 'We're already called Lighthouse, what if we just start selling lights?' And Jason just held me to it. Five minutes later, one of our friends called, and Jason told him I was about to take on the lighting department. I was so mad. But I'm so glad he did that because it held me to it."

Sarah, Co-Founder, Lighthouse Co

The next day, Sarah started building the business. She manually uploaded every product to a Wix site (pre-Shopify), handled every customer service call and email herself, and leaned on Google to fill every knowledge gap. By the time the site went live, it had 400 products. That number has since grown to over 20,000.

Lean Manufacturing Meets DTC Lighting

What sets Lighthouse Co apart from most home decor ecommerce brands is the operational DNA baked into the business from day one. Jason had discovered lean manufacturing principles about a year into running the cabinetry company, and those principles became the foundation for everything they built afterward.

"We start every single day with 30 minutes of paid time, every employee, making improvement. The goal is to look at a process you're doing every single day and ask, can even two seconds be cut? It's the aggregation of marginal gains. You do that day after day after day, and it's very, very powerful."

Sarah, Co-Founder, Lighthouse Co

This philosophy shows up everywhere in the business. Customer service templates and text shortcuts replaced repetitive manual typing. Order placement workflows were streamlined across 60+ vendor relationships. Onboarding processes were documented so new hires could ramp quickly regardless of background.

The results compound. When you're saving two seconds per interaction across thousands of customer touchpoints, the efficiency gains flow directly to the bottom line and, more importantly, to the customer experience.

Curation Over Catalog

In an industry where legacy retailers overwhelm shoppers with endless options, Lighthouse Co took a curation-first approach. Sarah built the catalog around solving the exact problem she experienced as a consumer: too many choices, too little guidance.

Every brand partnership is evaluated through the lens of customer service alignment. If a vendor can't keep up with Lighthouse Co's response standards, the partnership gets cut, even if the products are excellent. As Jason put it, "If you're known for being able to get your deliverables and then you have a brand that's sending out a faulty product and won't stand by it, then it tarnishes our brand."

That discipline extends to how they think about customer relationships. Lighthouse Co tracks personal details about their core designers and customers, remembering birthdays, noting a client's dog's name, and sending curated gifts after big projects. It's a level of care that's rare in scaling ecommerce and creates the kind of loyalty that drives organic referrals across the Canadian design community.

Canada to US Expansion on Separate Infrastructure

After years of serving both Canadian and US customers from a single storefront, Lighthouse Co recently launched a dedicated US Shopify store. The decision was driven by the practical realities of operating across borders, especially with tariff volatility making cost management critical.

The setup is intentional: separate Shopify stores, separate ad accounts, separate pixels for each market. This gives the team clean data on how each audience behaves, what products resonate in each geography, and how to optimize marketing spend without cross-market noise.

For the Canadian market, rising tariffs on US-sourced products pushed the team to highlight Canadian-made brands and adjust price points. For the US market, the standalone infrastructure allows them to build localized campaigns, ship domestically, and compete as a US presence.

How CTC Brought Clarity to the Growth

Lighthouse Co has been partnering with CTC for over two and a half years. Before that partnership, the team was managing growth with spreadsheets and gut instinct. Statlas and the broader CTC toolkit replaced that with real forecasting, proper data infrastructure, and the kind of strategic clarity that lets founders focus on what they do best.

"We've grown our business tremendously with CTC. We don't have to worry about that side of things. You guys got that handled. We just focus on what we're good at doing."

Jason, Co-Founder, Lighthouse Co

That trust has been so strong that when Jason and Sarah launched new ventures, including a Western apparel brand called Drumheller Western, CTC was brought in from the start. The playbook that worked for Lighthouse Co's scaling ecommerce journey is now being applied across their portfolio.

What's Next

The Lighthouse Co team is planning a major new warehouse and showroom in Lindsay, Ontario, with a target of early 2027. New product categories are coming to the site. And with the US market now running on dedicated infrastructure, the next year is focused on testing, optimizing, and growing that channel aggressively.

For a DTC brand that started with a throwaway comment during a car ride, the trajectory is remarkable. And it's built on principles that any ecommerce operator can learn from: relentless process improvement, curated customer experience, and the discipline to invest in infrastructure before you need it.

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Lighthouse Co went from spreadsheets to real growth infrastructure with CTC. If your brand is ready for the same kind of clarity, forecasting, and strategic partnership, we'd love to hear from you.

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