The light bulb is American again.
On July 4, 2026, America's 250th birthday, the first American-made A19 LED went on sale. It was built in Fargo, North Dakota, at the only factory of its kind. One bulb, in a country that had forgotten how to make its own. This is the story of how it got here, and the people who wouldn't let it go.
We didn't stage a factory. We built a real one.
We took three separate buildings, knocked down walls, put walls up, and made a light bulb factory. We sealed the shell from the roofline down and insulated it end to end. You cannot build precision electronics in a drafty steel building. Static-proof paint on the walls and static-proof epoxy on the floor. Power, HVAC, precision temperature, humidity control, and compressed air run to 175 feet of machines.
Board to pallet, one continuous line.
The line starts at the SMT machine, placing components on boards we design and build in-house. Automation builds the bulb. Automation packages it. Robots palletize it. Board to pallet, on the most advanced light bulb line in the world. At full capacity, it could make 30,000 bulbs every 24 hours, run by three people a shift.
Why I started GoodBulb.
I was born on the South Side of Chicago and grew up in Arlington Heights, Illinois. I trained to be a teacher earning an elementary education degree from Illinois State University. Then I took a sales job and spent 25 years selling commercial lighting, one business at a time.
I started GoodBulb in 2015 to make a difference. After witnessing a miracle in my own family, I was certain of one thing: meaningful change is possible. I wanted to help others, and since we sell light, the choice was simple. We committed to helping people who live without it.
How I built the factory.
America had no playbook for building a light bulb factory, so I had to write one. No one here could help, so I went looking for people who could. For eight years I traveled the world without a guide. Hong Kong and China, over and over. Vietnam and India, watching how they manufacture and learning what America had forgotten.
I built relationships the same way we built GoodBulb, with kindness, respect, and trust. One friendship at a time.
Back home, a team of five kept the business alive while I was gone for weeks at a time. I spent two years renovating the building and eight years chasing the rest. My wife, who has a full time job, picked up my slack. We have two kids.
The banks turned down my loan requests again and again. It wasn't until the tariffs and the push to reshore American manufacturing that a bank finally came on board.
Then I needed an engineer. I'm not one, and I don't understand the machines the way he does. But I could describe exactly how I imagined them working and what they needed to do. Cooper Bierscheid was instrumental in turning that vision into a one of its kind light bulb automation manufacturing line.
The past eight years have been one problem after another. We almost went bankrupt a dozen times, and every time we chose to invest in what came next. We built it slow. We built it the hard way. And it worked.
Before there was a factory, there was a reason.
From our earliest days, a portion of every sale has funded solar lanterns for families living without reliable electricity, and disaster relief when it is needed most. The factory grew out of that mission.
“I was on a trip to Asia searching for solar lanterns when I saw how light bulbs were being made. I was shocked at how inefficient it was, and I knew we could do it better. Now we're manufacturing LEDs in America so we can make an even bigger difference. That's why we sell light bulbs.”Tom Enright, Founder
The bulbs fund the mission. The factory makes the mission bigger.
More than one bulb.
The American-made A19 is our flagship, but GoodBulb has been a full-line lighting company for years. We carry thousands of products for homes, businesses, and the hard-to-find commercial and legacy fixtures other shops give up on. We still stock a rough-service incandescent for people who want that classic light and can legally buy it. And when it's time to retire your old bulbs, especially mercury-filled fluorescents and CFLs, we'll point you to the right way to recycle them.
Whatever you're lighting, we'll tell you exactly what you're getting and where it's made. The flag goes on the bulbs we make in America. Everything else earns your trust by being the right bulb for the job. And this is the part we'll never forget: those sales are what built the factory. We built it the slow way, on light bulb sales and people who believed in us. The factory is theirs as much as ours.
The hard part wasn't one line. It was a system that repeats.
Every problem we hit, we solved once and wrote down. That is what turns one American-made bulb into a plan instead of a fluke. We are already working toward the second line. And the part that matters most: the more bulbs we sell, the more we build, and the more American jobs we create. We started with the A19, the most common bulb in America. If we can bring that one home, others can follow. And we're going to.