"What's remarkable about Chicago Lighthouse Industries isn't that it employs more than 40 people who are blind or visually impaired. Or even that those people work on assembly lines, producing and packaging 1,000 wall clocks and 1,600 nylon printer ribbons daily. No, what's truly remarkable about Chicago Lighthouse Industries is that a casual observer would be hard-pressed to tell that the efficient, highly skilled personnel on those assembly lines have any disability." So wrote senior editor John Sprovieri 4 years ago, in his report on how several companies had successfully accommodated disabled workers on their assembly lines.
Alas, The Wall Street Journal reports that the clock is ticking for the 99 year-old Chicago Lighthouse, as it becomes yet another U.S. company to face heavy competition from China. Over the years, Chicago Lighthouse employees have assembled printer ribbons, fluorescent light fixtures, hydraulic hoses and even pogo sticks. But the mainstay of its business has been clocks, and the biggest customer for clocks by far has been the federal government. From a peak of 120,000 clocks in 1992, production has dropped to 104,000 last year. Once the nonprofit had virtually 100 percent of the federal government clock market; now it's doing well if its share is 60 percent.