Great Reccession helped fuel sign company's success

[Erik Sine]

Great Reccession helped fuel sign company's success

By Stacy Parker
The Virginian-Pilot
© November 10, 2013

When the Great Recession hit in 2007, most companies hunkered down and went into a defensive mode. It was all about survival.

But here and there, some entrepreneurs looked for opportunities. They knew big upheavals in the economy tend to shake out the weak. They put themselves in a position to pounce.

That’s part of the story behind Architectural Graphics Inc.’s recent success.

During the height of the recession, one of the Beach-based sign maker’s largest competitors folded. The closing of ImagePoint Inc. of Knoxville, Tenn., suddenly left clients such as Nissan and Ford in need of a new supplier.

AGI ramped up its sales team, and today those companies are among its clients.

The company’s sales have grown at an average 20 percent annual clip over the past six years and topped $112 million last fiscal year, said Craig Rohde, AGI president.

“It’s pretty amazing we’ve been blessed with such growth,” he said.

When Fred Knowles and David Ramsay founded AGI in 1969, they couldn’t have imagined that it would grow to what it is now – one of the world’s five largest sign makers.

But the company expanded steadily through the years, taking on larger and larger clients and projects and becoming particularly known for its work with convention centers, large hotels and stadiums.

Knowles and Ramsay moved their headquarters from Norfolk to the Beach in 1987 and over time took on Rohde and several others as partners.

Then came the recession.

The AGI partners decided it wasn’t a time to shrink or play it safe.

The shaking out of a competitor wasn’t the only reason why the company thrived during that time. Other market forces worked in the company’s favor.

As bank mergers picked up, they needed to replace the signs of the institutions whose names were thrown to the wayside. As retailers and automakers struggled to hold on to market share, many chose to redefine their images. New logos equal new signs.

Today, AGI has several clients that generate more than $10 million a year in revenue. Since 2006, it has more than doubled the number of national retail customers that it supplies, Rohde said.

“Ford, Firestone, Fed Ex Office – we work directly for those guys,” Rohde said.

AGI employs about 340 people at its three facilities in Virginia Beach.

And the company plans to add more than 100 jobs over the next three years.

AGI’s partners also decided over the past year that, after years of leasing industrial space, it was time to invest in property.

AGI purchased a $5.5 million building on Crusader Circle, in part with a $500,000 economic incentive grant from the city. The company is working on a large “re-imaging” project for automaker Hyundai and will invest another $5 million in improvements and equipment.

Some of AGI’s success is rubbing off on local materials suppliers. Covered Inc., a Virginia Beach-based vinyl-graphics company, provides the Visa and MasterCard stickers that go on the ATM machine kiosks that AGI creates.

Suffolk Iron Works fabricates the steel supports for the large signs that AGI manufactures. “How big they got as fast as they did, we went to night shifts,” said Kevin Neal, the Suffolk company’s chief estimator and senior project manager.

A seven-man night shift is dedicated every night to AGI work. Neal, who used to work at AGI, keeps track of the orders and deadlines. “My whole office is set up and geared toward AGI,” he said.

AGI’s factory floor at a building on International Parkway isn’t what one might expect from a manufacturing company.

There’s no assembly line. Instead, employees are assigned to “work cells” where, as teams, they toil away on special tasks – cutting, painting, assembling, packaging and shipping. Drills, screws and clamps line work benches. The whir of grinders polishing metal is constant.

Despite the freestyle form of labor, everything moves like clockwork through the plant.

“We’re trying to get a lot of product done and out the door to meet our deadlines,” said Stephen Mackay, who runs the shipping department. Mackay and crew work as many as 60 hours a week.

One of their big projects now is signs for the San Francisco 49ers’ new home, Levi’s Stadium, which is scheduled to open next year. They also did signs for the new Yankee Stadium in New York.

Theirs is a business with constant deadlines.

“There’s always someone on the other end needing something and (who) has an expectation of when they’re going to get it,” Rohde said. Getting the product out the door on time is just one part of the crunch. Installing it is another. AGI typically hires contractors across the country who know the ins and outs of a city’s permitting process for erecting signs.

In some cases, however, when there’s more on the line, AGI sends its own to deal with the complexities.

Shannan Hnatkowicz has been working at AGI for about five years. She’s a senior project manager who oversees the Nissan and Infiniti account. Infiniti, Nissan’s luxury car company, has more than 50 sites due to receive new signs, she said. It “keeps me on my toes.”

Hnatkowicz recently traveled to two Infiniti locations in Beverly Hills, Calif., and met with general contractors and local installers to see first-hand the concrete walls and tight spaces they would need to squeeze through.

“Every day is different,” she said. “You never know what issues are going to come up and what problems you’re going to have to solve – how to make things happen in the time frame you’re committed to with the client.”

In the automotive world, a consistent image is everything, AGI President Rohde said.

“There’s a look, a feel, a brand identity that they become accustomed to,” he said.

Slick facades, illuminated logos and sharp lettering all help car dealerships pull buyers into showrooms.

Ford Motor Co. is one of AGI’s largest clients.

“The appearance of dealers’ facilities and signs are essential to our mutual success,” said Bill Cook, a Ford retail identification manager.

So where next for AGI?

The company has gotten a taste of international markets through its work with Fortune 500 companies.

Overseas could be its next big focus, Rohde said. Or perhaps other kinds of products, besides signs, that involve corporate branding. There are plenty of possibilities in the United States with signage, too.

Currently, AGI manufactures static graphics – basically, signs whose images don’t change. Could interactive digital signs be the next big thing? Possibly, Rohde said.

If ever a company believed in the adage “Change is good,” it’s AGI.

Usually, that means some big client putting in an order for new signs.

Rohde’s ultimate dream?

Not much.

Just “the worldwide change-out of General Motors or McDonald’s,” he said.