How Many Sign Shops Have Closed Around You?

[SignSgin]

We are located in the Philadelpha area, servicing the southeastern part of PA, all of NJ & DE and northern Baltimore up. I've noticed atleast 5 sign shops locally close up in the last year, primarily because we are selling for to CHEAP!

Was quoting a job about year ago - channel letters on a raceway with awning mounted on fascia of building and removing an old set. Our cost $5000 - went in at at $8250 and lost it to a guy doing the entire job for $6,500. This seems to be typical of our jobs over the last year.

In talking with one of our biggest competitors who just went belly up (bank called their credit line) he blamed the going out on low margins.

Before the economy turned the wrong was we were running a gross profit margin of near 50% and I wanted to see how everyone else compares now and how many competitors you have seen disappear in the last year. I know this winter is going to be tough on a lot of people, but we need to start getting more for our services!

[Guest Signtiffic]

Yeah.... 50% gross margins would be great. Granted I would like to see about 75 more votes cast to get a better sample of the industry, but according to the 25 members who cast a vote at http://www.thesignsyndicate.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3721 only 16% of companies said they had 30% or more for 2009.

I should have distinguished between gross and net.....

Nationally I know of way too many companies who have shut down. Some very talented firms have given up primarily due to lack of work. One in particular is selling off their equipment just to make payroll. They deserve to survive IMHO... as they do great quality work and never cut corners.

Wish you the best Joe.... you're in a tough market area. What might help you is setting up an office in the District... obtain a CBE certification and reap the benefits (as well as deal with the crap) of D.C.

[Erik Sine]

I'm in San Diego and fortunetly for the low ballers we have around here & even the big sized company low ballers it seems to have finally caught up with them.

There is an entire shopping center that they did (The big co. Low Baller), it's with a sign company that was recently named here for wanting to pay their bills late to their clients. Anyway, typical RC/L jobs that normally would go for 8k were being sold as 5k-6k.

This is a shopping center that was conned or manipulated by the sign company to make them the only "Exclusive" vendor to install signs, which is illegal. I take that back, this PM company is just as corrupt as the sign company for other aspect they were doing to their tenants. What good is our local sign association here too during this time? When contacted, all I got was leafets and membership marketing statements, who cares about what's right for the sign industry. Anyway, that's another story!

So now this shopping center looks like crap at night, it called out for lower temp ccfl lamps (4500-3500)for illumination and it was soooooo important to stick with one sign company so we can have conformity & unification. The center is all over the damn map, it looks like our Great White Hope Project with all it's color temps LOL. So picture a nicely upgraded shopping center done at the worst time of our economy and all fitted with higher rent that was sent to the tenants, they were all forced to go from a simple wooden sign to RC/L's. That Property Management has to feel stupid by so many bad decisions, that center is pretty empty now as you can imagine.

Back to what I was saying. All their cheap low ball work has come back to bit them right in their lil "peter". A lot of the other somewhat big legits around here have had layoffs and shortened work weeks. As for the small fly by nights they come and go. The local Fast Signs, Sign A Ramas, they still open and close with the same equipment being recycled to the newby shop owners by the Franchise.

We'll, I'm keeping myself busy. I find that delivering when I said I was going to, doing what I said I was going to do, assuring quality with long assurances, never making a promise I can't keep & sticking to my guns on prices has paid off. I have some big good clients that have a lot of vendors that they pick and choose from, sometimes I pass off on jobs because of prices I won't try to beat or meet. I'm still the one they call for the important jobs.

I

[Kingpin Creative]

Around here the second a shop closes another one springs up, I was driving down the main drag and saw a new company.

What scares me is, wholesale companies are selling retail. At least 3 instances where a wholesaler sold and installed directly to a client, undercutting my client by a large amount.

[letterbank]

Around here the second a shop closes another one springs up, I was driving down the main drag and saw a new company.

What scares me is, wholesale companies are selling retail. At least 3 instances where a wholesaler sold and installed directly to a client, undercutting my client by a large amount.

I agree, as a small business owner in the sign business for 20 years (holy cow- that still amazes me) we cannot compete with the manufacturers selling direct or retailers selling Chinese knock-offs.

For those of you under 35-40 yo, this is what it was like in the 1960s when something marked "made in Japan" meant crap.

Even certain "retail" companies are selling $30 items for about a $4 markup. What happened to retail?

We have decided to remove many otherwise popular sign products and to sell only from reputable American and Canadian manufacturers who do not sell other than to certified distributors, like our company.

And I have my fingers crossed, if that helps.