Signs & Digital Graphics - December 2011

Erik Sine · December 2, 2011

We'll Sell to ANYONE!

Should be the title of this article instead of "The ABCs of Channel Letter Installation" By Reagan Dickinson

To better understand what I'm about to say, you have to go back to a thread I started "Honesty In Trade Magazines Part II" of July 09.

This is whoring our industry out, plain and simple. This is also why LEDs are so prevalent, everyone wants the Quick, Fast, Up and "collect my check" attitude, not the attitude of a true craftsman and tradesman. This poor attitude is perfectly illustrated here, and probably why the question was never answered in that above thread I started those years ago.

There is a list on their website of installers because they will "sell to anyone", probably even end clients. If Direct Sign Wholesale & Superior Wholesale Signage Inc. had any idea of legal ramifications of licensing they would not have that on their website. A unlicensed sign company CANNOT, subcontract a licensed sign company. Clearly they don't care as their attitude is the same as the magazines attitude, "Any monkey can do it". Just pop your head above the ceiling tile and this is what you do, this is what you look for the call us on toll free number!

“After they check the local codes, the salesperson who goes out to find what the customer wants should poke their head in the ceiling and see what’s behind the storefront. There could be a security gate, an air conditioner unit or steel right behind the fascia. All of that would make a more difficult installation,” says Michael Florio of Superior Wholesale Signage Inc., in Daytona Beach, Fla.

They want anyone to get involved in this activity.

“The site survey is the most important thing you do, and it should be at bid rather than after you get the job. You may be going through a foot of concrete for a flush-mounted letter set with 14 letters. In that case, you have to drill holes through concrete and it may take you all day to do it. If you didn’t properly survey the site and account for the material you’re drilling into, you just lost money on the job,” says Lewis. - Direct Sign Wholesale

LED channel letters are a lot easier to install than neon, which is why a lot of companies who couldn’t do neon and didn’t want to fool with 15,000 volt transformers are doing it now. - Warren Scortino Letter Fab

Now on to Neon

“I have neon guys going to LEDs because they’re getting beat on price with installation. We have people who do their own neon who buy the letters from us and can do the neon for less than LEDs, but what they’re telling me is when they go out on an installation it’s not as fast as it is with LEDs,” says Sciortino. “We have thousands of sets of LEDs and very seldom get a call, even on a power supply. When all we did was neon, we had service calls galore. The average call for a neon sign problem with your crane truck ran $450-$500 every time something when out, which is why a lot of people took maintenance contracts. If they’re selling maintenance contracts for LEDs they’re making a killing because they don’t require as much service and the service is much simpler because it’s usually just a power supply.”

Unbelievable! These WHOLESALERS sound like they have a weak customer base, a makeup of hack/low budget companies who they shouldn't even be enabling to be in our industry. So let's sell to a hack, is that the business and ethics approach?

Seriously, if you're getting have service calls galore from your sign, YOU need to stop making signs. Open up a print shop, you can't hurt anyone there.

NO wonder why this Magazine Signs & Digital Graphics is dead last in our polls by quality sign companies. I mean, they only got one vote, and it' probably by someone form the magazine. The gun sounded to run and they didn't even get a chance to take one step off the line.

Truthfully let's look at this article through the prism of anyone who knows what they're talking about.

LEDs are easy to install, yes. Neon too is easy to install, takes time on the field, but LEDs take time in the shop. You may save a couple of hours in total project time, that's all. When bringing up service let's be real, for any true professional sign shop who knows wha their doing, not the companies being catered to from this article which is all about sales, you can have a costlier disadvantage with LEDs in service should you pick the wrong one. Some modules start going out, and the LED line you just bought has been revised and is a different brightness and color, your "fucked", or your client is, you just collect hoping the warranty is out of the one year. You're now having to retrofit with newer product just to get a nice even match. Yes the same thing can be said about Neon should one lamp go out (that's non-red), but it's a closer match than LEDs. LEDs revise about once a year. Since 2008 on our testing here some of the major manufacturers revise their line once a year.

This is a shit on all light sources BUT LED article written by a noob and contributed by individuals I doubt have even personally handed/touched anything but an LED. The wholesalers here just want to sell to whoever. Direct Sign Wholesale has a nice testing set up and tests their own LEDs, but that's sort of tainted now that they have their own LED called the "Liberty", that's why they're so eager now to push LEDs. What they don't also talk about is the vast number of LEDs out there, too damn many in a matter of fact, but hey, it's a free market. But let's bring up service again, it's easy to service Neon & Fluorescent lamps, there's just too many LEDs on the market to service a sign quickly for your clients. You're hoping its just the power supply when you do so. None of these point are discussed or brought up, that's because it's just another Marketing ploy, aimed at the noobs of the sign industry , who are the only ones who read this magazine.

In turn, it hurts our industry because we have a trade magazine, the worst one in my opinion, along with a group of wholesalers who want to make our custom crafted trade into a commodity. They prefer to sell LEDs with their channel letters only because it's "Quick and Fast", and they get to collect. They don't need to employ craftsman, but they want to say they are craftsman.

I don't think we'll ever see a true and honest article which explains that all light sources have a place depending on the application, and that each light source has their advantages and disadvantages. We would really have to go back to as far as Sign Builder Illustrator Nov 2010 Hate to toot my own horn, but that's a VERY unbiased article.

I don't understand why some people need to bash one source to sell and make excuses for another, each stand on their own merit.

Why do you need to ABC anything to your fellow tradesman about electricity? Be it low or high voltage, in either case you still work with the dangerous primary. ABC, printing, or ABC's of vinyl selection.