About Us
Norman Lamps, Inc. is a family-owned lighting company that has been keeping the world lit since 1985. From our headquarters and distribution center in St. Charles, Illinois, we supply thousands of lamps, fixtures, and lighting products to customers across the United States and around the world — pairing decades of hands-on lighting expertise with one of the deepest specialty inventories in the industry.
We are equal parts distributor and manufacturer: we stock and ship the major brands you rely on every day, we build value-added and shatter-resistant coated lamps in-house, and we engineer energy-saving LED retrofits that cut our customers' cost and maintenance. Whether you need a single hard-to-find bulb or pallet quantities for a nationwide rollout, you'll talk to real lighting people who know the products inside and out.
Our Story
Our roots reach back to 1955, when company founder John J. D'Amico began his career at Drake Manufacturing Company in Chicago. He worked his way up from warehouse laborer to top salesman, learning every corner of the lighting trade along the way. In 1975 he struck out on his own, co-founding Micro Lamps, Inc. in the small town of La Fox, Illinois, and helping build it into a thriving business.
After a short retirement that simply didn't suit him, John's passion for lighting called him back. In 1985 he founded Norman Lamps, Inc. in West Chicago, Illinois — joined from the very first day by his eldest son, Dan D'Amico. Together they grew the company on hard work, deep product knowledge, and a relentless focus on taking care of the customer. As the business expanded, more of the family came aboard, and in 2006 Norman Lamps opened a purpose-built 50,000-square-foot production and distribution facility in St. Charles, Illinois, where the company is still based today.
John has since stepped back from day-to-day operations, but the principles he built the company on — integrity, expertise, and service — remain at the heart of everything we do.
Built to Last: Manufacturing & Innovation
Norman Lamps has never been content to simply move boxes. Over the years we developed a manufacturing and value-added side of the business that sets us apart from an ordinary distributor:
- Tuff Coat™ shatter-resistant lamps. Using a custom, UL-approved silicone coating system, we produce shatter-containment lamps and tubes that safely hold glass and contents in place if a lamp is ever broken — ideal for food service, industrial, and other safety-critical environments.
- PFA high-temperature coatings. For very high surface-temperature applications such as food-service heat lamps, our PFA coating withstands extreme heat without cracking, burning, or peeling.
- Tuff Color™ coated tubes. A proprietary process for color-coating fluorescent and tubular lamps in red, green, blue, yellow, pink, and custom tints — adding color and shatter protection in a single step.
- Specialty lamps. UV germicidal tubes for air, water, and surface sterilization; miniature T2 and T4 fluorescents; large PS-style lamps; and sealed-beam PAR lamps — the kinds of products most suppliers simply don't carry.
Our expertise even reaches the skies. Through our Aircraft Lighting Direct division, Norman Lamps holds FAA-PMA approval and stocks one of the largest aircraft-lighting inventories in the country, serving repair stations and distributors throughout the U.S. and overseas markets across Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South America.
Leading the LED Revolution
Norman Lamps saw the future of lighting early. We established a research-and-development group for surface-mount LED modules back in 2006, and by 2009 we were shipping a full line of high-output LED retrofit lamps — PAR, MR, and A-style bulbs built around state-of-the-art Cree diodes — alongside LED high-bay fixtures that replaced 250-to-400-watt metal-halide systems and mercury-free LED ceiling systems rated for 80,000 hours.
In the years since, LED has gone from an emerging technology to the heart of our catalog. As linear fluorescent and HID lighting were phased out across the industry, we helped customers make the switch with energy-saving replacements at every step — including modern LED T8 tubes in plug-and-play, ballast-bypass, and hybrid (Type A+B) designs, and selectable-color-temperature and selectable-wattage lamps that let a single product do the job of a whole shelf of part numbers. Today the majority of what we ship is LED, backed by the legacy and specialty lamps our customers still depend on.
What We Offer
- LED tubes, retrofit lamps, fixtures, high-bay and area lighting
- Metal halide, high-pressure sodium, and other HID lamps
- Linear, compact, and miniature fluorescent tubes
- Ballasts, LED drivers, and lighting accessories
- Sealed-beam, large PS-style, incandescent, and halogen lamps
- Shatter-resistant coated and color-coated lamps
- UV germicidal, aircraft, and other specialty lamps
- Hard-to-find, legacy, and obsolete lamps
We stock and ship trusted brands including GE, Philips, Sylvania, and Venture alongside our own Norman Lamps product lines — with wholesale contract pricing, no minimum-order hassles, and the strong on-hand inventory and high fill rates our customers count on to keep their projects moving.
Our Leadership
John J. D'Amico — Founder. A lighting man through and through, John founded Norman Lamps in 1985 after three decades in the industry. The company he built, and the values he instilled, continue to guide us every day.
Dan D'Amico — President. John's eldest son, Dan has been with Norman Lamps since day one in 1985. A University of Arizona graduate in business administration and marketing, he leads the company's product development and marketing.
Michael D'Amico — Vice President. Michael joined the company in 1992 and has been instrumental in its growth and operations ever since, heading domestic sales and international purchasing.
Ken Herda — Vice President. A Northern Illinois University marketing graduate, Ken joined Norman Lamps in 1999 and brings deep expertise in fluorescent, HID, and large lamps. He leads inside sales and domestic purchasing.
Keith Grieshaber — Sales Manager. Keith joined in 2001 and quickly grew from warehouse and shipping management into one of the company's leading sales professionals, now supporting many aspects of day-to-day operations.
Looking Forward
Nearly four decades in, we're as focused on the future as ever. The website you're using right now is part of a complete, ground-up redesign built to make finding the right lamp faster and easier than it has ever been. And we're not stopping there: we're developing a full distributor and wholesale customer portal with online ordering, account-based pricing, and self-service tools made specifically for our trade and high-volume customers.
Whatever comes next in lighting, you can count on Norman Lamps to bring the same expertise, selection, and service we've delivered since 1985.
Have a question or need a quote? Browse our catalog or reach out to our team — we're always happy to help you find exactly the right light.