As these days get shorter, I find myself using the "outside" lights more and more at home.  And with Seattle's well-chronicled clouds and rains, I am sure to be relying on the lights by our front door more and more.  As kids, we always called these the"outside" lights, and now that I am a proud professional member of the lighting  industry, I know that they are called "Exterior Sconces".  But on those late and stormy nights, they always feel like my personal lighthouse.  That beam of light that says "You are almost home.  Don't step in the mud!"

All of this comes up because we were working with one of our great vendors yesterday. Northeast Lantern is based in Exeter, NH (where they know a bit about long cold winters!) and they have been handcrafting high quality fixtures for over twenty years.

The fixture shown at the right is an exterior sconce from their classic "Onion Series". It's "onion" because of the onion-shaped glass bowl that protects the bulb.  In addition to being a striking and classic fixture, it is built weather tight.  Made by hand with "manpowered-tools" and the best materials, these lights look beautiful and make a great statement. 

Here is another picture that shows some of the craftsmanship that goes into these American made fixtures.

First of all, I reserve the right to add to or change my mind about this.  One really can't be monogamous when it comes to lighting!

But for some time now, I have been in love with this table lamp from  Cherry Tree Designs:

Perhaps now would be a good time for some mutual introductions!

We are ATG Stores.  The parent company is actually called Allied Trade Group,  Inc. but we like to shorten it up to ATG Stores.  Hopefully, you are familiar with our largest store LightingUniverse.  Lighting Universe was started in 1999 and has grown into the largest online lighting store in the world.  We opened FixtureUniverse a few years later to showcase plumbing fixtures for kitchens and bathrooms.  While we were thinking about kitchens and baths, we got to thinking about Cabinet Hardware and that got us started with KnobsandHardware.  And then...., well, you get the picture.  We now have a huge number of stores from the super-stores that I have already mentioned to some specialty sites like TowelWarmerStore.com (more on that in a later post).

Our primary purpose in starting this blog is to start a conversation with You!  We are in the business of offering you the items you need to improve your life at home and at work.  We try to do that by making it easy to find and compare various products and then we offer them at the best value possible.  More than anything, we want you to find what you need and then be happy with it AND WITH US for many years.

There will be several contributors to this blog as we go along, but for now I will kick things off.  My name is Michael Pinkowski and I am the Director of Marketing for ATGStores.  Along the way we will introduce you to other members of our team and to some of our great vendors.

So who are you?  We would love to hear from you.  We are going to start by keeping comments open, but you can also write to us at blogfeedback@atgstores.com