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...

We originally carried 3 million, but had to boost it to 5 mil when dealing with certain suppliers & customers. There's a difference between general liability and umbrella insurance and you probably have to have both. Since we're in Canada and have to carry an international policy, it's even more expensive. It doesn't help you (or us, or anyone) that the US is the most litigious place on the planet, but I would think if you plan to be doing work for larger clients, it will be par for the course and a few grand will have to be absorbed into your overhead. We get asked for proof of this insurance at least once a month, as it's often not the customer demanding the coverage (sign shop or contractor), but the end client and more than likely - their insurance company. They want to know that if your sign is faulty and burns down a building or kills someone, there's something to come after.

Erik - I have several products I could send - but we don't really offer a retrofit kit. I assume you want to use products that are actually going to be available, no? If we went to market with a 2x2 or 2x4 fluorescent replacement product, it wouldn't be some stick-in retrofit kit, but a full fixture that does a better job with the LED light sources than just sticking them behind the same lenses. It's a whole lot more involved and expensive for us to do this, though, which is why it's not on the immediate road map. We've done some IP rated fixtures for mining and factory projects where 2 x 48" lamps were used, but that's different than what you're doing.

You can make all the snide wisecracks you want, it doesn't change the direction things are going. Whether it's for better or for worse is up for debate (and clearly you're debating this), but the comments sound an awful lot like the ones made by sign painters when vinyl cutters started coming out. You may not believe this, but I've actually been involved in some neon sales recently and have recommended it for certain projects. I don't thump LEDs like some of you guys thump neon. There are applications for all light sources, I just happen to be closely involved in LEDs since we develop all kinds of products that neon could never be involved with. We do more custom and OEM manufacturing than anything else, as LEDs have a whole lot more applications than just signs - and it's only going to grow as brightness and reliability improve and costs go down. Ignore it / bash it / alienate if you like, but it's your loss.

http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/regulations/bulletin/standbypower-june-2010.cfm?attr=0 Since it applies to Compact Audio Products, Televisions, Clocks and Video Playing/Recording Products, I'm guessing sign companies with EMCs and/or Time/Temp displays may be affected, but think that's probably outside the scope of the regulation.

That's not a valid comparison at all. Are fish the next generation of whales? No. Is fuel injection the next generation of feeding fuel to an engine? Yes. Also, I never said neon would completely disappear either. They would have their specialty uses like carburetors still do. How about... How many dot matrix printers would you find in a printer catalog? How many articles on wooden hockey sticks vs composites? How many cloth diapers vs disposables? It's not that dot matrix printers, wooden hockey sticks or cloth diapers would disappear completely - far from it - but they would not be the every day, widely used standard products within their industries or categories. Neon will always be around, but people better get used to the idea of it being a specialty product and not a staple.

Sign Builder will have an LED retrofit theme to their September issue, I think. Not sure how far they go into the dollars and lumens, but it sounded to me like it would be more than just an obligatory single page write up.

I've used Letterfab and found the product to be of a good quality at a good price. Like any wholesale fabricator their production schedule will vary depending on workload, but they don't seem like some of the other shops who knowingly over-promise to get the job and then proceed to under-deliver. One set of letters they even painted the trim cap to match the Duranodic bronze of the returns, when it wasn't asked or charged for. With wholesale channel letters, many clients prefer to outsource the cans+faces but install their own light sources. This leaves a little more room for the sign shop to markup the letters, and some wholesale shops find it easier not to have to stock LEDs - or make custom neon - for what amounts to a small margin and potentially added warranty concerns. If you need LEDs, several of us can help you with that. Hope that helps, Bryan.

How many articles would you find in the August 2010 Road & Track about carburetors? Even a 1998 edition?

Not sure what you mean by changed - you mean the 60th floor exterior channel letters? The interiors were always that nice. Did you go to Vegas against recently Erik?

Speaking of customs... we used to get some control components from a US company and their name for one of the boards was "Brain Cell" You can imagine why they stopped it at the border and called me wondering WTF we were sending by UPS.

Well, if they're from China, they're not really L E D either. They're Err E D. Works on several levels, doesn't it?

So - I tried to find a coherent point to that article but found none. It mentions some different studies and tests, but cites none of the results and makes no comparisons. Something something DOE something something lamp. Something something CALiPER, Cooper, nothing, nothing. The end.

If they had a secretary for every 0.000001% of the US economy, half the population would be bureaucrats

Actually yes. You can argue about how do it - ideally it's not the government - but how else do you get the money flowing again?

big3d.com

It didn't move that much. On 10 million dollars, it's a difference of about $2,500. Was your factory actually in China at one point?

Thanks for sharing a distributor perspective of things. The economy sucked everything back right down to natural resources. Everyone had to reduce their inventory and their debt or risk going under. On the manufacturing side, some components now require 10~12 weeks lead time even if they are a regular mover. The only product or material that is produced is what is ordered - and what is ordered is often just the bare minimum as end-use projects shrunk drastically as well - as everyone was holding onto their money. Retailers cleared their shelves and their warehouses, and on down the line. Irregular spec work like signs and custom manufacturing had no choice but to really cut back. It'll get better a little at a time, but there really should be a reduction in how much credit and debt companies operate with. It's no different than homeowners getting mortgages that are above their means. It's often said that "it's better to work with other people's money" and there is some truth to that - but it should be your customer's money - not the bank's money. When you get it, it becomes your money and not still owed to a 3rd party. There has to be a more healthy ratio of your customer's money vs lines of credit.

If this forum is creating quarks, there are some people at CERN that might want to talk to you.

Heh. Maybe everyone on here decided to psyche you out and pull the same "ignore you" bit on your own forum ;)

Some neon can go well past 100K hours - red especially - but it has to be very well made and it's a little trickier with White, considering the effect that temperature change has on it. Entirely possible but with the number of quality benders out there, not exactly a sure thing. I've seen neon that's 30 years old and still going strong, but far more often see stuff that's only a few years old and needing frequent service. The climate in St. Louis is probably a little kinder to neon and trannies than it is in the northeast. Most White LED systems list 50K hours as the useable lifetime, but that's not when they fail. L70 is a new lighting industry term that project the time when the light will degrade to 70% of it's original output - which they consider to be "usable life" and this is where the 50K hours most often comes from. It's a bit different with signs, since even neon can drop to below 70% during the first few months if the weather is on the cool side. Cheaper systems will degrade sooner than 50K hours, while other quality systems will have a usable life that's probably closer to 100K hours before it's too dim and needs replacement. As for using "blueish LED" for better punch... this is for 2 reasons. 1) The human eye is more sensitive to cooler temperatures - might have something to do with evolution of many thousands of years of living by moonlight. 2) Cooler tone LEDs are slightly more efficient, so for the same power you get a touch more light. A 5300K White is actually the nicest, purest White we make (most used for backlighting) and if it's properly assembled the letters would look better with this color light source - but most sign module manufacturers use 6500K as standard and some are even cooler still. Sloan is often in the 8000+ range, for example.

The poles must be $30,000 each.

"up to" buys a lot of leeway.

No offense to Mustang fans, but I'd rather rent a Focus or Fusion. Even if I was going to overpay for sports or luxury, I'd go with an Infiniti G37 or something. As for the Hertz re-brand, I'm glad to see they've decided for a modest refresh. Switching to black letters over a yellow legend is a reversal from the yellow letters on black - which makes things harder from a lighting standpoint. You now have to light the whole yellow rectangle instead of just the letters, so this redesign works better in print or online, but it's possible for signage that they keep it the other way around with yellow illuminated letters. Anyone been working on this?

We have PCBs that allow us to specially tune a specific color mix using RGB diodes, but without the need for RGB controls and complicated wiring. Purple is made by mixing mostly Blue with a little bit of Red. Send me an email with some project details (size, letters, etc...) and I'll see what we can do.