Overcoming and Adapting at Sign-A-Rama Downtown

The Sign-A-Rama Downtown franchise location in Louisville, Kentucky, has seen an evolution over its 21 years in business. Owner Maggie Harlow and her husband started the company while looking for a change and have yet to look back. Initially, the shop focused on basic printing and handling project management for large companies, including their signage, banners, and even ADA signs. However, she notes that while the business had a great deal of success with those niches, several recessions and changing business needs led her to look for ways to diversify. That’s where digital printing came in.

Emma Barnett, production specialist at Sign-A-Rama Downtown, loads a coroplast sheet onto its Fluid Color flatbed printer. | Credit: Sign-A-Rama Downtown

"We bought [our first flatbed] in 2007, and that saved our business,” she says. “We were able to do so much printing without as much labor — that filled a gap while we were going through that recession, and our biggest clients disappeared. We started to notice we could do a lot more with digital printing and continued to upgrade and invest in it.”

She notes that while that side of the business was growing, they didn’t “get serious” about it until around four years ago, just before the pandemic. “We were doing large national projects,” Harlow says, “and it was exhausting, and margins were good, but not great, with a huge amount of risk. I thought there had to be a better way to make money.  I started the campaign to pivot the company to more digital printing.”

Harlow notes that it wasn’t an overnight success as she created a division within the company called SignRabbit to handle the fast turnaround times and shorter runs she was hoping to build more business around. Typical jobs, she notes, have about a two-week turnaround time and bring in around $2,000 in their regular operations, so she had to sell her employees on the fact that they could produce more jobs at much lower price points with the digital equipment.

“It took a little while to separate them,” she notes, “so the same people aren’t selling both types of projects. As we have refined the process and made SignRabbit projects a priority, the business has grown.” The company, which does around $4 million annually in sales, brought in around $500,000 last year with its new digital quick-turn focus, which Harlow notes is growing rapidly.

Upgrading for the Future

To handle the increased speeds and quality Harlow wants for the new vision of the business’ future, the shop recently upgraded to an LED flatbed press from Fluid Color, replacing an old HP FB550, which itself had replaced the shops original flatbed, a Fuji Acuity.

But technology has evolved, so Harlow and training manager Thomas Nance agreed that a new flatbed was needed. They have been very pleased with their choice. “We love it because of its speed and beauty, and it’s so easy to operate,” Harlow notes.

Zach Baker, an installer with Sign-A-Rama Downtown, applies vehicle graphics. | Credit: Sign-A-Rama Downtown

The new flatbed also fills another purpose: speeding up the production of ADA signage, which is still a big business for the shop. “We also have a flatbed from DirectColor that does raised lettering,” Harlow notes, “but we were doing so much ADA signage, we needed a flat printer that was faster. Now we can split the raised and flat prints between the two machines and speed up our ADA signage production.”

But the choice of a new flatbed press — and the company is also looking to upgrade its Mutoh and HP wide-format presses in the near future — wasn’t straightforward. Harlow laughs that she has “an allergy to diving into tech stuff,” so when she goes to industry events and is bombarded with salespeople talking about how their machine is the fastest or best, and many of the printed samples are of women in body paint, she was “demoralized.”

Which is when she ran across Fluid Color.

At their booth, she notes, she was happy to find no images of women with body paint, and instead of a salesperson trying to sell her marketing hype, she was able to talk to an engineer. “It wasn’t just samples and people,” she says. “They sold me by talking about how the machine was made, and they were able to explain the differences between their machine and others. They stripped away all the marketing BS about the printers and helped me understand why the prices are different, why the carriage matters, etc. It was more of a consult than sales or marketing. They didn’t insult their competitors. They just explained the industry and how it works.”

Caitlyn Nunavath (left) and Dan Nausa (right), designers at Sign-A-Rama Downtown, are helping out in production. | Credit: Sign-A-Rama Downtown

“In 20 minutes, they talked her through more than she’s learned in 20 years,” Nance laughs. “I gave her a list of five or six manufacturers to look at, since she was at the show and I wasn’t. She didn’t get far down that list — she stopped at Fluid Color, and that was it.”

Neither of them has looked back since the press was installed, with Nance noting that while they loved their previous flatbeds, this press “gave us the capability to print faster, and at higher quality, which was huge. When all you need is a flat print, it is much faster, and it gets the wear and tear off the DirectColor, not tying up that printer with other jobs so it can focus on the ADA. That really has been huge.”

The shop is also looking to upgrade its aging roll-to-roll equipment. Nance notes that effort will add white ink capabilities, allowing for better options for printing on transparent media such as second-surface perforated clear vinyl (color-white-black) and color-white-color printing for lighted cabinet faces and decorative printing on glass films such as etched vinyl — all things they can’t currently do today.

Evan Sanders, Production Manager with Sign-A-Rama Downtown, weeding a cut-vinyl project. | Credit: Sign-A-Rama Downtown

In addition, Harlow notes she is also considering investing in an aerial lift, which would allow the company to take on a greater range of installation applications and keep them in-house. “That is proving to be a really big part of our overall culture and business model,” she says. “We have always just made do with one or two installers, but after an acquisition in 2022 of another sign shop, the volume of our installation work grew, and we ended up building an entire installation team, with an installation manager. That has become part of our culture of excellence — we want to have the best installation team in the city.”

She continues, “This feels like the final piece — if we can make installation excellence as good as everyone else in the company, and the customer sees excellence everywhere they look, [we’ll be satisfied.] Many times, customers don’t meet anyone in person except the installer, so we want to make sure the customers have the same, consistent experience they have seen all the way through the process.”

In the end, while Harlow advises other shop owners not to shy away from investments back into their business, at the same time, she notes, “Don’t fall in love with a piece of equipment just because you want to own it. Sometimes new technology comes out — for example, I look at all those fabric printers, and they are such cool machines, but I don’t have a shirt business. It’s important to ask if you have the business to support it or are you just looking for something new, shiny, fun, and exciting. Build the business first, outsource, and then buy the machines.”

She continues, “And then, as you improve the quality of the machines and the work, raise your prices regularly. You might say you can’t afford new equipment, but if you raise prices regularly as technology gets faster and better quality, you can charge more, so maybe you can afford that upgrade. It’s important not to assume that the way you do business today means you can’t afford to tweak the business model to make new equipment more affordable.”

Brooklyn Burnett, Sign-A-Rama Downtown's ADA specialist, assembles ADA signage. | Credit: Sign-A-Rama Downtown

Nance agrees, stressing, “Everyone wants the next great thing, but you have to justify it — do you really need it, and what will it do for you? It’s a huge leap of faith — a big investment, and there is always some risk — but doing your homework and knowing what you need and what it will do for you will help you fill a niche or create new business.”