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By Sharon Toji · Posted
I don't think it is just Signs and Digital Graphics. The engraving magazine has also been closed down, I think, and they have replaced everything with one publication or maybe newsletter that will cover everything from signs, digital graphics, awards and engraving and stuff like embroidery machines, etc. It's a disappointment to me. S&DG originally had me write their articles on ADA Signs and appointed me as their "Expert" but when I couldn't any longer afford to have a booth at the NBM Show, they dropped me, although i was still listed as their resident "Expert." I had a real fondness for that magazine, since I wrote my very first ADA article for them back in 1992 when they were called "Sign Business" and that really began my career as an ADA sign "expert." I used to write for Signs of the Times, but they pretty much dropped me when I broke with ISA. However, Awards and Engraving Magazine still had me write articles once in a while, and paid me a small stipend for each article, which was welcome. Now, I don't expect to see many ADA items in the new "one size fits all" magazine, which might be on-line only as far as I know. I am getting it on line, and it's mostly just small blurbs about advertisers that pass as articles. -
By Sharon Toji · Posted
I am fortunate in that the three full time employees left in my business after the debacles of the Great Recession followed by the LAUSD IPad scandal which forced us to refuse to do work for our major client (i.e. Los Angeles Unified School District), are really good people and when we got 8 weeks salary from a PPP loan have readily given up unemployment that was actually more than 30 hrs EFT salary for them. And, they were willing to take 30 hours rather than 40 so we could use 25 percent for rent and utilities, and also so we could write small checks for our three part time "when needed" employees who did installation. We are doing everything we can think of to bring in business, but find it unfair that we shut down as directed, and now find many of our competitors stayed open under the fiction that "signs are communication and communication is essential." The fact is, I think we are lucky to have the governor we do in California, who is careful and listens to science. California was on its way to being a disaster, and because we shut down earlier than some other states, we escaped the worst. Even though we are a huge state, and consequently have more cases than some other states, our numbers are so much lower than New York and New Jersey, as well as a couple of other much smaller states. My own residence county, Orange County, has in some ways defied the orders and had some demonstrations, and is now experiencing a higher number of cases and deaths. We just had our worst day ever. Of course we want to reopen, and hope we will still have some clients. Because our income essentially stopped -- even was slowing greatly in January because building managers were hearing about the virus, and I think put projects on hold we now have built up debt we didn't have before. We were just hanging on, and now the cliff just got a lot higher. But we have been in business 64 years so I'm not giving up without a fight. The more of companies that stay in business, the more money that will percolate through the system, and the more of us will also stay in business. -
By ChannelBender1 · Posted
Happy Memorial Day weekend Erik! I don't know about you but I'm BIG TIME ready for some R&R! Thankfully, SDS Automation has not been impacted much by COVID. We have been fully operational the entire time and have continued to install and service machines with effectively no interruption throughout Q1 and Q2 2020. But I digress, back to the topic at hand. We just made the decision to pull our advertising from SDG. Just not confident that the ROI is there considering the direction they seem to be headed. We allocated those dollars toward increasing our presence with SOTT instead. Hopefully it proves to be a wise choice. Readers will be seeing some big improvements in our ad presence beginning in June. Looking forward to some positive feedback from the industry. Have a cold one (or ten) for me! -
By Texas Sign Services · Posted
We have invoiced them on two jobs and were paid within 45 days -
I would never have imagined in my life time I would have seen the entire Country shut down. It is so heart breaking to hear some of the stories we are hearing. I can't imagine being in CA or MI where the Governors are just not listening and are just keeping everything closed when they have seen that opening up slowly in other States has worked with no problems. Few people had enough money in the bank or savings to last a month paying bills with no income - much less 3 months or more. The one thing that is going to be hard is to get people to come back to work! Most are making more sitting home drawing unemployment than they did working. Got an e-mail from the Governor last week saying that if I offered my employees their jobs back and they refused to come back (I never let any of mine go - been paying them to sweep the floor and clean up the yard) I needed to let the State know and they would cut off the unemployment. Sad to say, but that's the only way we are going to get some folks to go back to work. Stay safe everybody and hopefully this thing will be over soon!
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