Talk about a "Light bulb!" moment.

Three years ago, Darrell Jervey was trying hard not to appear too bored at his wife's company's Christmas party.

In typical guy-at-wife's-company's-Christmas-party fashion, Jervey's eyes began to wonder across the ceiling.

Up high, the western Henrico County resident noticed electrical cords snaking through rafters, connecting to lights illuminating partygoers down below.

Nearby, he saw permanent recessed lights in the ceiling. Then came an idea.

Within a few weeks, the University of Virginia graduate was piecing together prototypes of a product that could quickly convert a common recessed "can light" into a chic hanging pendant lamp. It is the kind of light you might sit under at a trendy restaurant or coffee house, but it could be put in your kitchen or bathroom.

Plus, the installation can be done by anyone who knows how to screw in a light bulb -- no messing with electrical wires or hiring an electrician.

Three years and three Chinese factories later, thousands of Jervey's Instant Pendant Lights are being rolled out to all of the more than 1,300 Lowe's Home Improvement stores -- a big leap from his first retailer, Richmond-based Shades of Light.

"We were doing fine as a small company . . . but that one order really catapults us into selling container loads of lights every week," said Jervey, chief executive of Worth Home Products.

He hasn't stopped at Lowe's.

Worth is in talks with other national retailers to carry the light fixture, possibly as early as this spring. "We are as busy as we can possibly be each day, building, shipping and fulfilling orders," said Jervey, 42.

The key piece in the Instant Pendant Light the "instant" part -- looks like the end of a light bulb. It screws into where the can light's bulb would normally be. A brushed nickel cover hides the recessed hole in the ceiling.

An electrical cord drops through the center of the cover, and an elegant shade is placed at the bottom of the cord. Prices vary depending on the shade but hover around $40 to $60.

At his home in a neighborhood off River Road, Jervey demonstrated a can light-to-pendant installation that took less than two minutes.

"I was really sort of surprised that there wasn't something like" the lamp available on the market, he said, which led him to start the business.

Having a lighting retailer in his backyard to plug into for advice didn't hurt, either.

Ashton Harrison, president of the Shades of Light in Richmond, offered pointers on how to get Jervey's lighting business humming.

The firm puts its own Italian shade on the lamp and sells the product for $95 in its store on West Broad Street, in 4 million national catalogs and on its Web site.

"It sells great. People love them," Harrison said. "It's really one of our best sellers."

Why? Recessed lights create a shadow when placed over a kitchen counter or table. "A pendant light brings light down to the counter," she said. "It's a more efficient use of light."

Jervey's light idea was born at the Christmas party in 2004, about a year after the former Washington information-technology executive moved his family to the Richmond area.

Post-party, he tracked down an engineer in China, who developed technical light models and helped set up an overseas manufacturing operation.

Jervey bounced ideas off of locals, including Shades' Harrison and Rob Mitchell, managing partner at investment banking firm Alpha Omega Capital Partners.

Last year, Jervey's one-man band landed the Lowe's account.

"He and I were marveling a year ago over coffee at Starbucks, and he told me, 'I just got this big thing with Lowe's, and it's just me," Mitchell recalled Jervey saying, noting how he had to grow quickly to deliver on the contract.

Jervey called on an old business partner, Steve Machiorlette, who was running a tiny firm in Texas that made wooden air conditioning grilles to replace metal ones commonly found in homes.

That company, Worth Home Products, had a Web site, employees, customer service, a bookkeeper and a warehouse: "things that I needed," Jervey said.

He used the profits from his initial deal with Lowe's to buy Worth in April, paying out its five investors and keeping the name. He and Machiorlette, who now is president, are equal partners.

The Instant Pendant Light was given its own aisle display in a few Lowe's stores in the summer, and should be in all the stores by March. He has signed deals with other retailers, but he can't mention them yet.

"Very few companies can get a large contract from as many [companies] as he did in less than a year," Mitchell said.

Part of Jervey's success has been his development of a simple product that appeals to many people, Mitchell said.

"Combine the attractiveness of his light with his incredible skill of finding and quickly accessing just the right person at these big box retailers, and he has been able to create a substantial business overnight."

Costs are kept low with the entire manufacturing process done in China. Lowe's picks up the lights, ships them to the U.S. and holds them in its own warehouses for distribution to its stores.

"It's a tremendous cost and risk savings over U.S.-based labor," Jervey said. "Some people say, 'Well, you're using foreign labor.' In my mind, I don't feel particularly guilty about this. I have my own company, which wasn't in existence a few years ago."

Not to mention an expected $5 million in revenue by the end of the year, when he plans to more than double his domestic work force to 15.

Worth also was named one of a dozen area "companies to watch" in November by The Venture Forum, a local venture-capital group.

Perhaps that Christmas party wasn't so bad, after all.