2023 Wide-format Innovators: S2K Graphics

By Allee Bruce

Dan Pulos

Nestled in the vibrant city of Simi Valley, California, S2K Graphics has been a steadfast presence in the point-of-purchase (POP) market since its inception in 1989. This wide-format printing company has carved a niche for itself by primarily catering to the food and food service industries, serving an array of quick-service restaurant giants and convenience stores across the United States. From conceptualization and design to precision printing, meticulous fulfillment, and expert installation, S2K Graphics takes pride in its end-to-end capabilities, offering clients a seamless experience. With a dedicated commitment to customer satisfaction and innovation, this company, founded by Dan Pulos, has garnered a reputation for solving challenges and leaving an indelible mark on the industry.

Armed with a Master of Business in finance from UCLA, Pulos initially navigated the corporate finance world during the tumultuous era of Wall Street takeovers in the 1980s. However, his desire to venture into the uncharted territories of entrepreneurship eventually led him to the printing industry.

“I just decided I didn’t want to die having not tried to do something on my own,” he says. And that’s when he settled into the sign industry — at a time when sign-making was transitioning from hand-painted to computer-based.

“I put all my MBA in business planning stuff together, wrote up a business plan, found the target market area that worked best, found the high traffic counts, put my sign shop smack dab in the middle, paid somebody $10,000 to teach me the business in a different geographical area, and opened up and was busy right from the very first day.”

Since S2K’s early days, it has aimed to provide innovative merchandising solutions to its customers. While Pulos says he doesn’t have a love for the printing process itself, he does have a love for creating work that helps his customers achieve their objectives. That’s where the innovation comes in, and how S2K has stacked up five U.S. patents over the years.

“We’re solving the challenges that our customers have, and from that is where the innovation spurs,” he says. “S2K has five patents, which isn’t a ton, but it’s probably five more than most printing companies have. Every single one of them were either designed to give us a competitive advantage in the marketplace or they were designed specifically to fix a customer problem.”

Red Dot Solution

The company’s latest patented product and Pulos’ personal favorite — Red Dot Solution — falls into the latter category of solving a customer problem. The system allows oversized graphics to be installed by non-professionals in mere minutes, meaning no installation team is needed.

Pulos describes how the solution came to be: “We got to installing window graphics on a large scale for McDonald’s. So, we actually ran a program four or five years ago where we installed window graphics promoting their summer beverages at 10,000 restaurants. We designed and printed and installed all 10,000 in like six weeks.”

S2K Graphics’ patented graphic material and installation process Red Dot Solution allows a retailer’s or restaurant’s hourly employees to install large-format graphics with no experience necessary. | Credit: S2K Graphics

The program was successful, profitable, and exciting, but Pulos said some markets didn’t participate because of the installation cost being more expensive than the actual graphics. Because of this cost and time issue, he’s had this solution ruminating for 10 years.

He wanted to develop a process to make putting up large, 4-5 ft. graphics fun and easy. So easy and so fun that when the kit arrives at a restaurant, for example, the staff members argue over who gets to put it up.

And that’s exactly what Pulos and the team at S2K did, working on different variations and formulations over the last decade and finally coming up with the Red Dot Solution. Through this patented graphic material and installation process, S2K can ship oversized graphics where they need to go and have a complete novice install them.

In a press release from June 2023, the company explains the solution in simple terms: “Simply peel off the red dots on the back of the graphic and position it on the window, wall, or floor. Reposition as needed until the placement is perfect. Once it’s in place, peel off the panels on the back of the graphic one at a time, so the graphic can be smoothed down onto the surface section by section, preventing bubbles.”

While retailers prefer to have graphics professionally installed, Pulos says, it’s not always an option financially. “Those that can’t afford it have two choices,” he says. “They can use our Red Dot, which gives them a big image on their windows, which they pay a lot for, you know, for real estate, or they can use smaller decals from competitors, which are obviously less effective.”

He says Red Dot fills a void where businesses might not have enough money to pay for professional installation but still want that wow factor of oversized graphics.

Product Development

As Pulos mentions, the team went through several iterations before they came to Red Dot. They played around with different materials, varying widths for the panels, and the size of the red dots. Because the product is intended for novices, Pulos knew he needed an air-egress material that was forgiving and repositionable.

After finding that the thicker material was hard to pull off, that’s where the red dots came into play. The red dots offer some grip without having to fully commit to the position of the graphic. Pulos says this discovery was a huge breakthrough in the product creation process.

Then came the panel portion of the product. Pulos says the team quickly figured out that if the person installing the graphics only had to work with a 5" panel at a time, it would make for an easier install and no bubbles. Lastly, the team created a special squeegee for application due to specific performance requirements.

“I’ve been at this business for 30-plus years, and I would just say that no product that we created have we craved the solution for a longer period of time and been more satisfied with the final result,” Pulos says of Red Dot Solution. “It almost makes me giddy thinking about it. Just because we tried so hard to do this, and when we finally did it, it just felt really good.”