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(May 2011) posted on Tue May 03, 2011

106-year-old Shiner Signs spins off Signage US for a national niche.

By Wade Swormstedt

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ST has a new associate editor, Robin Donovan. On her first day (appropriately, St. Patrick’s Day, given her surname), I outlined Signage 101 – how the sign industry is categorized and characterized. I explained electric and commercial signs, handcrafted and CAS signs, franchises and independents, custom and quantity signs. For the latter distinction, I explained that quantity-sign manufacturers are the biggest sign companies.

Usually.

I received an emailed article in January from a PR representative for a sign company. It was one of those rather generic treatises, written for a general audience, with nothing specific enough to interest a sign-industry audience. I glance at such things, but don’t pursue.

Usually.

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But I was intrigued, and, as I investigated, I discovered a century-old sign company that’s created an interesting niche. The chronology and current strategy bear repeating, as explained by company president Robert Laurencelle and VP of business development Mark Burack.

The niche
Shiner Signs, the parent company, sells custom signs in New England. The $2 million company has never left its Meriden, CT roots. The Signage US subsidiary (which received its own name two years ago) only caters to national companies. It primarily manufactures quantity channel letters; cellular-phone companies are targeted, with approximately 15% of the stores in malls.

With $7 million in annual sales, 90% is for chains, and 80% comes from five top customers. Signage US handles all of Verizon’s 400+ U.S. stores. It serves T-Mobile on the East Coast from Maine to Virginia.
Each of the 20+ employees is cross trained. To entice customers, Signage US offers bumper-to-bumper, three-year warranties and strives to provide optimum customer service.

“Signs from traditional quantity-sign companies may take 2-3 weeks to ship, but we can do it in 2-3 days,” Mark said. “We’ll offer free engineering analysis to any new cus-tomers. We have them ship us the drawings and an actual sign. We find that 80% of the signs involve some type of shortcut – cheaper materials, not UL listed – and we’ve even found some that were 4% smaller then spec’d.” (The company website, www.signageus.com, depicts an example, up close and personal.)

Additionally, because convincing chains to switch vendors is difficult, Signage US will provide signage for the first store free of charge.