Warton

The company was founded in 2009, the founder was the former director of development of the Wimm-Bill-Dann concern Denis Frolov, who decided to open his own business when he learned about the plans for the sale of the PepsiCo corporation in 2010. Frolov had occasion to buy LED lamps to open production, and he assumed that demand for them would grow. The selection of a niche was also facilitated by the parliamentary discussion of the law “On Energy Saving” (adopted a year later in November 2009) ^[1] .

Starting capital amounted to 40 million rubles of own and borrowed funds. The company began by selling Chinese compact fluorescent lamps under its own brand of Gauss. Soon Frolov’s business partner, co-owner and CEO of Warton became Ilya Sivtsev, who had previously assisted Frolov in selecting suppliers and was involved in the distribution of Gauss products. The decision taken in 2010 to reorient to LED lighting brought the company enough profit to buy an abandoned factory in the city of Bogoroditsk, Tula Region in the fall of 2012 and invest 250 million in opening production and entering the corporate market under the new Varton brand. By 2016, total investment in the plant reached a billion rubles ^{[1] [2]} .

The structure of Warton includes a laboratory and a research and production center with an area of ​​20 thousand m² in Bogoroditsk , a central office in Moscow and foreign offices in Hong Kong and Italy . The company employs 500 people, half is in production, and students from the Bogoroditsky Polytechnic College undergo practical training there. The design center developing new fixtures is equipped with 20 full-time employees ^{[1] [3] [4] [5]} .

The factory in Bogoroditsk independently produces lamp housings and diffusers, imports socles, lamp radiators, electronic drivers and LED elements, and organizes the final assembly. Products are sold through a dealer network, delivered to Russia, the CIS countries , some countries of Europe and Africa ^{[1] [3] [2]} .

Since April 2015, the company has been included in the list of organizations that have a significant impact on industries and trade of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation . In 2015, the company sold about 1.4 million lamps, the plant’s revenue amounted to 1.3 billion, the entire company’s turnover was 3.25 billion rubles. According to estimates made in the fall of 2015 by the general director of the Tula Region Development Corporation, the company controls 18% of the Russian LED lighting market ^{[2] [1] [6] [7]} .

In August 2016, in an interview with the General Director magazine, the Varton’s operations director reported that the company abandoned the conveyor principle in favor of assembling the entire product with one employee, which increased labor productivity and allowed expanding the range without increasing staff ^[8] .

The company developed and supplied luminaires for the M11 federal highway ( Moscow-St. Petersburg motorway ), the design of which takes into account the large distance between the lampposts, and lamps for the GUM facade that emit light of a strictly defined tonality, are protected from moisture, frost down to -60 ° C and heat up to + 60 ° C. According to the first deputy governor of the Rostov region , the company's lamps are used for interior lighting of the Rostov Arena stadium . Emergency lighting produced by Warton is used in the IKEA store in Khimki , Moscow Region, Burger King restaurants, Moscow City Clinical Hospital No. 72, and the Altufyevo production and industrial zone ^{[1] [9] [10]} .

The Gauss lamp package design was awarded first place in the Packaging & Label category at the 2009 National Idea! Advertising Festival, the 2009 Silver Award and the 2013 bronze award at the Pentawards International Packaging Design Competition ^{[11] [12] [13]} .