Kay Wax: Socially conscious store owner, solar pioneer

Bright City Lights is more than a showroom filled with hundreds of light fixtures, furniture and home accessories. Owner Kay Wax said the store represents her deepening commitment to the community and the environment.
“We are really trying to be cooperative with our environment and as sustainable as possible,” Wax said. “We want to provide opportunities for customers to have a minimal impact on the environment and still have comfortable homes.”
The store, moving into its second decade, is powered by solar energy and has a new section with environmentally friendly furniture. Although those are recent changes, Wax has always combined making a living with her own brand of social responsibility.
Wax was a social worker at Columbia Regional Hospital when she was laid off in 1995. For her next move, she made the unlikely decision to become a homebuilder, with some guidance and support from her brother, a builder in Springfield.
For years she had worked with patients with disabilities and was keenly aware of the difficulties they faced in finding suitable places to live.
“So I started building universal design homes where the doorways were wide and everything was accessible,” she said. “That’s how I got into building. That was my main emphasis, and then I expanded from there.”

As a homebuilder, it bothered Wax that she had to go to St. Louis or Kansas City to buy lighting for the custom homes she built. So in 2000, she started Bright City Lights in a 2,000-square-foot space on Vandiver Drive.
Business was good, and in 2004 Wax expanded to a 6,000-square-foot building she built at 1400 Heriford Road, her current location, which is visible from Interstate 70 between the exits off Providence and Range Line roads.

Today, the showrooms of Bright City Lights are filled with light fixtures of just about every shape and size, as well as furniture and other home accessories.
“When we’ve found a niche or a void, we’ve educated ourselves so that we could fill that void,” Wax said.
This includes what Wax describes as Columbia’s most varied source of vanities, as well as a growing inventory of items that fit her personal and business philosophy of providing items that are local, sustainable and environmentally friendly.

Earlier this year, Wax launched a “store within a store” stocked with furniture and home accessories that are locally made and have a low impact on the environment. The new store, Mary Moss Earth Friendly Furniture, is named after Wax’s mother and is housed inside Bright City Lights.
Wax said art and wood products at Mary Moss are created locally, and, “Our philosophy is that nothing in here has done significant harm to our environment.”
Taking the store’s commitment to sustainable living another step, Wax last year was selected to be one of two companies participating in Columbia’s “Solar One” program, in which the city purchases solar power from businesses and then makes the electricity available to consumers.
The program was initiated by Quaker Oats, according to Connie Kacprowicz, a spokeswoman for the Columbia Water and Light Department.
“Quaker first started talking about a program that would provide wind energy to the city, but that didn’t make as much sense for Columbia,” Kacprowicz said. “We started talking about solar and have been able to make that work.”
Today, Quaker Oats and Bright City Lights are both selling solar energy to the city.
“We were selected to provide five kilowatts of power to the city of Columbia,” Wax said.
Wax said she bought the 48 solar panels and paid for the related equipment and the installation in the hope that within 10 years, the amount of money saved by not having to buy electricity from the city, and actually receiving money from the city, would equal her investment.
“My philosophy is that everybody needs to do something environmentally small, and then it will make a large impact on the quality of our lives and for the future,” Wax said.
Participating in Solar One, she added, is an important part of the kind of business owner she wants to be. “I feel like I have a responsibility as a businessperson to present a message of unity and working together to make our town successful.”