JR Guerrieri (“JR”), the founder of the Company, has always had a passion for technology and electronics. As a small child, he would take apart radios and TVs. As he grew older, he continually sought out the latest technology advances in both electronics and musical instruments.
 
In high school, JR got involved with different musical bands and different entrepreneurial businesses. In college, he stumbled upon a long-held family ravioli recipe and started his first venture, Bratch’s Ravioli. In 1988 JR was awarded Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year for the State of New Jersey.
 
After selling the ravioli company in 1993, JR followed his passion for music and dedicated his full energy in a musical career. He continued to pursue his education in music, gaining admission to the Juilliard Conservatory of Music in NYC.  After enrolling and moving to NYC in 1995, JR worked as a music engineer in many of the blues, jazz and rock clubs there. He had the good fortune of working with some innovative jazz legends. JR got more and more involved in the engineering and recording side of the music industry and began working and learning about all the electronics in the recording industry. It was through these activities in 1992 that JR first discovered an up and coming technology in light emitting diodes (LEDs), well before the Blue LED was invented, which lead to the white light LED.  This technology fascinated him so much that he started researching possibilities of ultra-bright light that consumed very little energy. Marrying his passion for electronics with his interest in LEDs, JR designed and assembled this new lighting system that was unseen elsewhere in the world, JR then quickly improved on this basic LED system by adding a 4 bit voice chip, which at the time only recorded analog sound and repeated it back.  JR then programmed code on this very inexpensive microchip and created the first battery operated smart LED device He named it the “SmartLyte”, an automatic lighting system to illuminate the interior of a handbag JR filed for his first patent on February 19, 1997 and 3 years later it was granted. JR successfully patented this technology, JR pioneered this wireless battery operated LED lighting technology for the Fashion, industry Special Event industry, Flora industry and the hospitality markets, their introducing the first ever flameless battery operated votive candle light! With JR’s vision, these new ultra bright micro lighting devices opened up a whole new world where lights can be utilized without the use of wires and would stay bright for long periods of time.  With the use of these micro lights, industries that never before used lights now embraced this new technology.  The Floral industry is using these Acolytes in their bouquet arrangements. The event industry is using them as accent lighting on tables and in displays and as a replace for traditional votive lights. The handbag industry uses them as automatic lighting to illuminate the interior contents of the handbags, as well as many other industries and applications of these SmartLytes and
Acolytes which are currently being used all over the world today.
 
In 2005 JR formed the architectural lighting division “Acolyte LED” and has designed invented and distributed LED Lighting Solutions across the USA.  Acolyte has also flied numerous patents in the field of LED and heat sinking technology as well as LED control systems.
Over the past three years JR and Acolyte have opened up lighting Agency networks across the country to sell Acolyte’s line of LED Lighting Solutions.  Acolyte has been able to penetrated its brand to international lighting designers and architects and has completed over 500 LED lighting projects in the US alone along with a few international projects in Singapore, Abudhabi, India and Bahrain.