Family-owned companies often consider succession planning critical to the success of the business. The goal is an orderly change in leadership as the parents bow out of running the business in favor of the children. But there are times when the transition is unexpected. Such was the case of Burbank-based Matthews Studio Equipment Inc. when in June its co-founder and long-time Chief Executive Ed Phillips died following a boating incident off Marina Del Rey. Tyler Phillips, Ed’s son, was being groomed to eventually take over the business, and he became the chief executive following his father’s death. “We had a succession plan in place,” Phillips said in an interview with the Business Journal. “It just came too early.” Ed Phillips, 72, died June 22 when the dinghy he had been riding in apparently hit a wake and he was tossed overboard. The younger Phillips said his father was not wearing a life vest and was eventually picked up by a fishing boat. Once he was brought on board, he died almost immediately from heart exhaustion, Tyler Phillips said. “In the last year, he had developed some heart issues so his heart was kind of weak already,” he added. “I think the swimming for that long wore him out. He passed peacefully.” Ed Phillips’ legacy to the entertainment industry is the company he helped start 50 years ago, Matthews Studio Equipment, a manufacturer and distributor of lighting, rigging and grip products used in television, film and commercial production. Ed Phillips was instrumental in the standardization of rigging equipment used by grips, the on-set staff providing camera support and handling all the non-electrical equipment that modifies the light. He helped put Matthews on the map with the first collapsible C-stand, which Tyler Phillips describes as “the number one tool on a set as far as grip and lighting is concerned.” A C-stand is used to position light modifiers, including nets or flags, in front of light sources. The name has been trademarked by Matthews. Before Matthews, a C-stand was welded at the base and couldn’t be closed and so were hard to move from location to location. As productions began to shoot more and more on location, there became a bigger demand for the equipment to go along with it, he said. “The way stands were built back then were not really meant to put on a truck,” Phillips said. So, his father spent a lot of his product development time working on the portable C-stand, introduced in 1974, he added. “He was looking at how he could make the stands collapse and fold up and transport from location A to B without taking up too much space,” Phillips continued. Tyler Phillips knows a bit about product development himself, having been vice president of that group at Matthews. The younger Phillips had been working for Bank of America in the San Diego area while attending college when his father came to visit him. He could tell that his son was bored with his job. Ed Phillips convinced him to come back to Los Angeles and go to film school. Tyler Phillips transferred to California State University – Northridge where he graduated in 2010. In the meantime, he had interned for his father at Matthews and then at a major Hollywood studio. The studio offered Phillips a full-time job which he turned down to go work with his father instead, who told him he could start at the top and work his way down or start at the bottom and work his way up and gain the respect of the other employees. “So, I obviously I went with the bottom-to-the-top path,” Phillips said. Nearly six months after his father’s death, Phillips still gets choked up talking about him. He said he was fortunate to have been able to work with him for 10 years. Some of his favorite memories are of making product videos and laughing hysterically with his father. “He was a very energetic man, and very fun to be around,” Phillips said. “He knew how to live.”