You got into this mess HOW???

[Erik Sine]

We did this thread a ways back when this board started out and read a recent thread about asking the question:

How did you get into the sign business, and what dd you do before?

I'll start off.

I got into the business probably like most, by accident. I don't ever remember being in school and wanting to be In the sign business. I was in Kauai Hawaii for 6 months back in 1992 and I just got layed off a job delivering office supplies all around the island but since Hurricane "Iniki" hit, insurance companies weren't paying business's fast enough, so my employer slowed down and in turn I was let go. It wasn't until I was walking back to the Westin Hotel from being layed off, which was my home placed by HUD (My previous dwellings roof got caved in), a man pulled over on the side of the road and asked me if I wanted a job (what was the luck and timing of that?). He was also there displaced and doing Dairy Queen signs and needed fresh help.

I was 18 at the time, so I didn't do much before that other than work at grocery stores and other places. The Sign business worked out good for me because of my love for Graphic Arts in school and the knowledge of computers at the time. Oddly enough, one of the neighborhood kids I used to hang out with as I was growing up, his father bent neon in his garage and did signs all over town. Later, when I started my own business we did a few jobs together. Odd how the world comes full circle sometimes

So, that's me in a nut shell.

[geraldi]

I was in the IT industry. We did custom software for heavy equipment manufacturers. Link Belt, Hyundai ect... While doing that, my partner and I built a web site that allowed us to tranfer big files to our customers. This was in the late 90's when it wasn't common to send someone a 50 meg video or other file. We called it Whale Mail, www.whalemail.com. We decided to let other prople use it and it caught on. We even got on one of the tech tv shows.

Long story short, we got an offer from a simialar company (Swap Drive), although we were the first, to buy the site and the code. We sold that as well as the sofware company. I was out of a job.

After about 6 months I got bored and took a job with a friend of mine at a tech company that had a sign company next door. They were always asking for help with stuff. Mainly digtizing. In my opinion they were not very good business people, yet they always had lots of business. One thing led to another and 2 years later I was in the sign business. That was 6 years ago.

During that time I have gone from strictly retail to retail and wholesale, to now, strictly wholesale to the trade. All we do now is channel letters and custom cabinets, pylons ect... to the trade.

Just last year Swap Drive was bought by Symantec, the Norton Anti-Virus people. Luckily I still had some stock. Always figured it would be worthless. So, I was shocked when I got the email that Symantec wanted to buy my shares after all those years.

[imanut]

Now that is an interesting story !

gn

[LiteGirl]

Not much of a story to tell about myself I'm afraid this is pretty much my first real job since being out of school.  It's always different and not the same as working for Starbucks, that's for sure.

[fishing nut]

I got into the buisness waiting for my friend Jim to get done bending glass so we could go fishing. After hanging around a bunch of days his dad said "If your gunna stand there pick up a broom and sweep". That led to helping out on an install, then painting backgrounds, before I knew it I had a full time job and Jim was waiting for me to finish so we could fish. One day he decided to move to Florida to become a cop and left the neon plant. His dad said if I wanted to I could learn neon on my free time. It was a once in a lifetime chance. Stupid me kept up with it and one thing led to another, Bought the buisness, moved to Jersey a few years later and whala here I am 20+ years go way to fast. If I have to do it again I would be a state worker or as they say life is a circle and would do everything the same way and end up here again.

[slowdncr]

How did you get into the sign business, and what dd you do before?

I was born into the sign industry. My grandfather owned and operated Nelson Neon in Richmond, CA. My dad joined him the year I was born, 1953. The shop was my playground until I was about 12. Then I started working summers and weekends as shopboy, including wiring ballasts, tying neon and even doing the old tile mosaic "S" logos for Safeway stores. Otherwise, I liked hanging out in the art department and riding shotgun on the service truck. Then it was off to college to study architecture, because I sure as heck wasn't going to stay in the sign business.

Cut to 1977; Having graduated from the University of Oregon in Architecture and Planning, I was working as a Land Use Planner in Hood River County, Oregon when the Commissioners felt I was making the public too aware of the issues (which was part of my job) and cut my funding. A call came in from my dad saying he could use my help launching his new sign company, Bill Moore & Associates (BMA). So I loaded up the truck and moved to Albany. It was supposed to be a temporary assist, as I was pretty much committed to Oregon by then. This past Saturday, I had my 33 year anniversary at BMA. Oregon got by without me, and BMA got ever stronger with me being here. I am now majority owner of that sign company.

In hindsight, as a young man, I was in denial over joining in the family sign business, but I have really enjoyed the experience. There's an inalienable family pride that causes us to do stupid things that ends up really defining our lives. Now my son is working for us part time while he goes to college. 4th generation sign guy? That will be his decision.

[bigidea]

My story starts out exactly like Westcoast's. Grandpa was shop foreman for the largest sign company in town in the sixties, and my dad graduated high school in 1966 and became a union sign hanger for the same company. Then is 1969, they'd had enough, and my grandpa at 54 years old began the family sign business with my dad in his garage. I was born that year, and also grew up playing in the shop until I was working part time and summers off and on through high school. Dad and his brother bought the company in 1982, and like may of us, I said "never". Well never say "never".

Here I am at 42 years old, wondering how many years I've officially been in the business. I tried night school for engineering, and a stint in insurance, but there's just something I love about this business. After a couple of years away from the shop, I've worked for a sign supplier and am now back at it with my own new start-up company. I'm going to pursue a few ideas I've had over the years, and hopes are that one day I'll be back with the family business, a little older and a little more wise than before. Saying as much in the context of the sign business, that sounds like a conflicting choice of words!

[Signworksinc]

I took graphic design hoping to work for a magazine or website company, last day of course they said make sure you get at the least $10 and hour. I couldn't pay for much with that in Canada, $6 of it is tax. A signarama offered me a job as installer helper, so I took it. A year later they sold and I bought my first crane (45' mighty lift), a ladder and borrowed a hammer drill from a friend. That was 9 and half years ago. Now I have 2 bucket trucks, 2 pick ups and a crane. Can't see myself doing anything else.

[manuellynch]

I was VP of Business Development at Microsemi (NASDAQ: MSCC) and was involved with developing new markets for semiconductors we made. I had developed a way to introduce a web based catalog of our 25,000+products in 1995. We were a little ahead of our time.

During that time we were working on devices for implantable heart pacemakers, new systems for military electronics, electronics for mobile phone battery chargers, parts for welding equipment, components for wireless networking (early days), and CCFL lighting controls for notebooks and laptop computers.

We owned a patented packaging technology that Motorola was using on the StarTac mobile phone - they licensed the technology from us. I came up with a crazy idea to compliment our efforts in CCFL lighting by working with CREE LED to package their little LED chips in our patented package. We were making great progress.

And then 9/11 hit - we were the largest military electronic semiconducto company in the world - our stock on Wall Street soared. CREE was very interested in buying our company which at that time was bigger than they were! The CEO of CREE and the CEO of Emcore another company we worked with on Space Satellite applications called me up one day and asked me to meet with this guy they knew - a company called Gelcore.

So I met with Michael Petras the CEO of Gelcore - he flew out to visit me. They were a small startup that came from GE and was partly owned by Emcore. We had dinner and he told me he was interested in what we were doing in the area of LED lighting. He said he was in Southern California to look at purchasing a company in the LED arena. He showed me their first prototype - he called it "Tetra" - he said they would introduce this thing on the market going after SIGNS....I had no clue what he was talking about - it just looked RED and wirey!

Shortly after my meeting with him I opened up Nasdaq in NY and our company was getting a ton of attention - we were getting too big too fast. I decided to cash out a bunch of my stock in Microsemi and i made my $$$ millions and decided to move on.

I went to go work for our largest investor - a very wealthy man who had just finished is divorce with his wife which was the largest recorded court settled divorce in New York history - over $100 million. Most divorce cases of this size settle out of court. He was dumb and decided to fight it in court.

So he asked me to find places he could "invest" his money to "hide it" from his wife, etc. Whatever!

So I started looking at technology startup companies...and then one day one of my ex-employees at Microsemi called me and said - "Manuel you have to go see this little company in Southern California - they are so badly run and they need your help." So I asked who they were and he said "do you remember when GELCORE came to see us, well they were trying to buy a company called PERMLIGHT."

And so I want to visit Permlight and the CEO asked me if I wanted to be their CEO....and that my friends is how I got into the sign industry.

And some other points - when I joined this badly run Permlight it was time to get rid of some of the employees who were not really working - one left and went to become president of Sign Resources in California and another one went to work for a company in Riverside CA - Marko from YYZ does business with them.

So from developing components helping people with heart problems to having lunch with the CEO of a small startup that became GE LED lighting - my odd path to the world of signs.

Oh - and I am a graphic designer and have been since I was 12 when I programmed my Apple IIe to draw pictures.

[YYZ]

My story goes will be a little longer than some of yours and goes back to 11th grade. I can't remember the name of the course, but it was a computer class of some kind in 88 or 89. The teacher was a bit of a nerd, but had some experience with pen plotters and drafting and whatnot... Anyways, we were working with Corel 3 at the time and we were able to take a 12" x 16" Roland tabletop plotter and put blades in it to cut vinyl. I had already taken various art and drafting type classes, but this was now a way to make money. I used to buy 20x30 sheets of vinyl and was cutting out stickers for cars, band logos, whatever. I went to class and basically made money while I was there, and the teacher loved it.

Anyways, I was a wiz with Corel and with his nudging I started looking at graphic design as something to get into, rather than architecture, which was my goal until then. That summer - believe it or not - I somehow managed to get the school to rent me the attendance office to use as a design/sign shop. I used that little tabletop plotter to make all sorts of signs, banners, window graphics... I could come in only while the office was open, as they do keep some skeleton staff around all year, but my rent was basically nothing (I helped the office ladies with some pamphlets and stuff) and got to know some of the nuns pretty well - the school spanned 3 city blocks and used to be 2 separate schools, one boys and one girls, with Jesuit priests and Catholic nuns living on the grounds.

The next fall, I learned how to silk screen from a different teacher and was doing T-shirts and stuff, also at school. I had a spare after lunch and this religion class - the teacher being the silk screen guy - so I basically spent my afternoons either in the computer lab, the art dept or the cafeteria playing cards. I got an 85% in that religion class, BTW.

I was doing design work for the school, helped kick off a school magazine (while publishing a zine of my own), etc... and was persuaded to apply for a co-op placement in a printing company's graphic department during the second semester. Once we had the placement lined up, I had made a rather special arrangement with those two teachers, who also happened to be department heads... They wiped out my previously planned second semester and made it so that I could take one mandatory class (out of 5 credits / time slots), apply 2 of them towards the co-op I was going to take and another 2 of them for what they called an "Independent Study Program". The point of that program was to take my design experience at the co-op and elsewhere, and help the school create a design curriculum for grades 11 and 12. One was an intro to design, the other was closer to a novice desktop publishing course - much more college like than high school.

Anyways, mixed in with a whole lot more card playing and detention (I still had to go to homeroom every morning), learned pretty quickly that I didn't want to be stripping film after college, but did get to use some pretty power software and scanning equipment that was so outrageously priced, in hindsight. The "Intro to Design" class was implemented the following year and the following year, the "Design Fundamentals" was implemented and by that time, they school got their hands on a 24" vinyl cutter. It lasted for several years that I was aware and eventually morphed into something entirely different - I just thought it was really cool what we were able to do at that level.

I got into 3 different design programs in college, but went to the school with the 3:1 girl to guy ratio, in a city away from home, of course. It was a waste of time, considering they had only one computer lab and we wouldn't even get into it until second year. I moved into residence after 4 months off campus, and ended up living there during the summer since I got a summer job working for a lighting company. I drove around the province doing display resets at all the K-Mart stores and did other store setups for Aikenheads (our precursor to the eventual Home Depot buy into Canada), Home Hardware, etc... I heard that they needed someone full time and I basically went and asked to stay on, rather than go back to school - so that was my entry into the lighting biz.

We rep'd for Lithonia Lighting, Murray Feiss, Beverly Hills Fan and several Canadian companies. Over the next few years, I'll bet they I assembled several thousand ceiling fans, chandeliers, flush mounts, etc... I was still living in residence, since I never moved out and was never asked to re-apply (the girl to guy ratio was supposedly 7:1 in res!), so I got to live the campus lifestyle for another full year while basically working full time, driving a company car, etc... Anyways, my retail connections were growing and I started supplying sign and display graphics to several companies putting stuff into all these new Home Depot stores that were opening, among others. I eventually quit the lighting job to start my own sign company, which was the much hated "doing stickers out of his garage" kind - except I wasn't a hack with no design skills. I was doing banners and displays for retail, had some event companies that used me, etc...

From there it spun into a FT job for 2 different, properly run sign companies - one that did vehicle graphics and tint (we had one of the first Gerber Edge units in Canada) - the other being an architectural sign shop where we did everything up to channel letters, pylons and such. I left there to take a job doing signs in the Cayman Islands, which didn't last all that long - the owner was an asshole - but made some contacts and was supposed to help 2 other guys start a new (proper) sign company in a 12 unit plaza they were building. Rather than import $125K worth of signage from Miami (which was their plan), I told them that for the same money, we could do all their signage in house and be 3-way partners in a new company that would be a tenant in their own building. So I quit my job and came back to Canada - to my hometown rather than Toronto where I went to school - to wait until the building started taking shape (it was an empty lot when I left), but those expected 3 or 4 months turned into 6 or 7, even longer. I didn't get a place or buy a car or even a FT job since I had some money saved, but had also picked up a vinyl cutter and stuff as part of my contribution to the new company. When it started looking like an indefinite wait, I gave up on going back and did the "basement operation" again for a while, but eventually took a job with another bigger sign outfit.

It was almost 2 years back in Canada when I started itching to return to Toronto, so in 2002 found myself working for a lighting company that did a lot of specialty fluorescents, but also dabbled in these new fangled LED things which were made by the company that supplied the fluorescent lampholders and such (Vossloh-Schwabe and Tridonic). Through one of his reps, he lucked into a $140K POP (edgelit sign) project and he needed someone who knew a bit of both signs and lighting - which was me to a T. So I was their graphic/fixture/sign sales guy and chased some of POP signs down, and experimented with a lot of LED stuff. The company outsourced almost everything at the time, but I landed a POP sign job that needed 3000 feet of an extrusion that no one could supply us - so the boss finally caved and agreed to let me tool up and edgelit sign extrusion. We did that job and several others, but the company started to go more heavily into some standardized LED lighting products. I liked the custom and signage side, and after 2 years there, worked out an amicable departure where I would focus more on LED sign products and they would stick to lighting. To this day we still have a good, frequent working relationship.

I stayed with the POP stuff and ran another 2 or 3 edgelit extrusions, made our first LED strips for lighting signs and figured after about a year of operating from home, that setting up a proper LED lighting company was the way to grow. I started marketing those edgelit products to other companies and grew a little at a time. Today, we still do custom signage and edgelighting systems, but also a wider range of display and architectural stuff that exceeds the range of the usual suspects supplying the sign industry. We are an OEM supplier to a handful of lighting companies who have us do everything from LED engines to complete fixtures, and are constantly tooling and developing something new. So I'm definitely a sign and design guy by background, but work specifically with LEDs. I'm now part company president, part industrial designer, part electronics designer, part shop foreman and the main part of our sales effort. We're growing and have some great plans to continue growing - though I have to admit that the 2008/09 recession really knocked some of the wind out of our sails - but we're back on track and people can expect YYZ to become much more of a recognized name in the coming months and year.

I can't believe I just typed all that, but what the hell...

[manuellynch]

I can't believe I just typed all that, but what the hell...

Thank you for sharing Marko - you are one respectable young man.

[Signworksinc]

Hey Marko what schools did you go to in Toronto?

[YYZ]

Hey Marko what schools did you go to in Toronto?

I grew up in K-W, so Humber College was the only Toronto school I went to. Did my time in Rexdale, then downtown and Woodbridge for a few years each, now I'm in Mississauga. Our shop is just a little south of you, close to the airport.

[Camelot Sign]

My entrance into the sign industry wasn’t planned at all. In fact when I entered I didn’t really know what I was getting into.

I was introduced to electricity courtesy of Uncle Sam’s Navy back in the 70’s. After six years in the grey canoe club I went to work building, tuning, and installing electronic instrumentation in chemical plants and an aluminum foundry. My dad was the president of the chemical plant I went to work for and that didn’t really work out to great. It wasn’t that working for him was rough because I didn’t really answer to him. The tough part was that a few others there thought I got special treatment just because I was the son of the boss. The fact of the matter there was that I had to work twice as hard just to prove that there was no special treatment.

Anyway, leaving there sent me to middle Tennessee and into an aluminum foundry. That was probably the worst place I have ever worked. It was hot, noisy, and very dirty all the time. The fact that we rotated shifts every week for the first 3 months I was there and then moved out to every month didn’t help either. During this time my wife took on a temporary position at some placed winding transformers.

My wife informed me that the factory she was winding transformers for was looking for an electronics technician to work in the winding department setting up the machines and making sure they were winding to the proper spec’s. I applied and was hired on at France in the winding department in 1992.

I was fortunate enough to work my way through the company from winding transformers into the manufacturing engineering department making sure the transformers and ballasts were being built properly and improving the manufacturing processes. My next move was into the design engineering department as an electronics technician working on their second generation indoor electronic neon power supply. Then it was on to the secondary ground fault nightmare.

Associate engineer was my next position and off I went making sure the magnetic ballasts were built per the design and helped design neon transformers. My first major assignment was to re-create the France cold cathode ballast and transformer line that is in use today. During this time more and more technical calls were being directed to me from sign shops and distributors about how to apply the transformers and ballasts to their installations.

This became my full time position with France. From about 2002 until 2008 I was traveling the North East US as the regional sales rep as well as taking all of the France technical support calls. Due to family reasons I had to relocate to Florida so off I went on my own. Camelot Sign came into being.

Now I take technical support calls for all types of electrical signage and even do a fire investigation now and then. I may have spoken to quite a few folks on here over the past few years. This November will make it 18 years in the sign industry in one way or another. I would have to say this has been the most rewarding and most fun of all the areas I have worked in.

[imanut]

If you were with France all those years, then we surely had to have met ?

gn

[Camelot Sign]

If you were with France all those years, then we surely had to have met ?

gn

It is possible. I moved from Manufacturing Engineering, where I didn't see too many people from the outside, to Design Engineering in July of 1996. I moved into designing transformers and ballasts in 2000 which is when I started getting more into the outside world. During that time I worked for Al Smith if that name rings any bells. I know of you Gary but I'm not sure we have met face to face.

Dave

[imanut]

Definitely knew Al Smith ----------