For years there has been a critical demand within the sign industry for a book on the structural engineering of signs. This comprehensive text more than meets that demand -- it exceeds it. Sign companies, ...
Mouse Design Studio
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By Steve Aust
It’s a harsh, but undeniable, reality – signshops must adapt themselves to 21st-century business models. Sign-industry entrepreneurs must become more web-savvy and efficient with their marketing and processes. Often, this means less time cold-calling and pounding the pavement and, instead, optimizing a website that efficiently conveys a signshop’s capabilities.
Mouse Design Studio (Cumming, GA) has mastered the 21st-century economy. Beginning with sandblasting signage more than a decade ago, the shop has created niche websites that cater to several sign types. Rather than throwing its energies into the arduous process of unearthing potential customers, Mouse lets its array of sites do the work and bring customers to them. Wade Parker, the company’s president, has overseen the shop’s transformation from a garage enterprise to a booming, full-service facility.
Point and click
A native of Wrightsville Beach, NC, Parker served two years in the U.S. Coast Guard before he graduated from North Carolina State University with a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1994. He moved to Atlanta the day he graduated. However, when he considered long-term career prospects, he decided the sign business offered a more professionally fulfilling alternative.
“Looking ahead, with a physics degree, my choices were basically to teach physics at the high-school or collegiate level, or to wear a white coat and work in a lab,” Parker said. “I have a passion for art – painting, sculpting, anything using my hands – so I minored in graphic design. The sign industry offered a challenge that complemented my interests, and I decided it offered a more fulfilling career opportunity.”
Parker learned the trade by working at small, family-owned shops and franchises in the metro-Atlanta area. After he’d saved enough money and developed the ambition to run his own business, Parker sensed the then-emerging importance of the Internet and founded www.sandblasted.com as an enterprise under his umbrella company, Wimbley Inc.
He began running his business out of his house and blasting his signs in a homemade booth on his back deck. Soon, the World Wide Web helped attract signshops looking for a reliable subcontractor, and he began hiring staff to help design and fabricate the signs – as well as process the growing pool of online requests.
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