Size Matters in Retail Signage

Mass-merchandise retailers in the United States reeling from the poor economic climate have slashed payrolls and closed stores at record pace for more than a year. Circuit City totally disappeared, and companies including Blockbuster, Home Depot, Macy’s, Starbucks and Saks have shed more than half a million jobs collectively, proving that the retail market is not recession-proof.

To spark consumer spending, many smaller stores are employing innovative marketing tactics. Some are offering freebies, steep discounts, enhanced customer loyalty rewards or other perks such as career counseling and blood-pressure screenings to keep shoppers coming. Despite improved sales and signs of recovery on the horizon, gross domestic product still is down. But hopeful store owners still need a different type of sign—the really big, printed kind.

As print-for-pay price margins go, the large-format signage segment, which includes banners and in-store signs, can be lucrative. In March, News America Marketing (NAM) acquired rival Floorgraphics after settling a five-year-old anticompetitive lawsuit with the Hamilton, N.J. firm. Research shows floor ads yield double-digit sales increases on average. Those colorful graphics we all trample and roll over with shopping carts are quite cost effective, delivering the lowest cost-per-thousand impressions of any ad media.

That kind of value is Muzak to grocers’ ears in any economy,. NAM also bought Floorgraphics because media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his marketing cronies are well aware of one of the most important consumer habit change in the past 25 years: At least seven out of every 10 purchasing decisions are made at the point of sale today.

Print Makeover

Paul Lilienthal is a banker turned printer who knows a thing or two about marketing. Lilienthal bought Minneapolis-based Pictura Graphics in 2003, when the shop catered to the trade show graphics industry. His vision of diversifying the then 18-year-old business has paid off, especially now as the exhibit and events business is “significantly lagging,” he said. In addition to expanding into visual merchandising and POP displays in retail outlets, Lilienthal also added digital print capabilities to meet growing demand for graphics on fabrics, flexible media, and other materials.

Operating under its new owner’s build-it-and-they-will-come strategy, Pictura Graphics’ client list grew to include names such as Anderson Windows, Home Depot, Macy’s, and Reebok. Full-time employees at the 50,000-sq-ft facility now number 45. Annual revenues also have grown, to some $10 million—more than 70 percent sales growth in the six years since Lilienthal took the helm.

Lilienthal estimates that large-format retail signage has grown to represent approximately 35 percent of the shop’s overall sales. About a year ago, Pictura supplemented its equipment list with two Roland DGA inkjet printers—64- and 104-inch Soljet models—that complement its Roland dye-sub line acquired six months before. And last fall it added a Durst Rho 800 Presto, a continuous-board, flatbed inkjet UV device that prints up to eight feet wide.

Pictura’s work even has been featured on the television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in late 2007. For the episode, the firm produced floor graphics, dye-sublimation fabric pillows and blankets, and 60 square wall murals, each measuring 48×48 inches.

Pictura prides itself on being a sustainable print pioneer, too. It is part of the Printing Industry of Minnesota’s “Great Printer Environmental Initiative” and, last August, was the first U.S. firm to become nationally certified as a “green printer” by the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership.

Everyone Needs a Sign

Pictura Graphics is one of many similar companies across the country offering large-format print and related services for in-store retail graphics. Another sign printer with a proactive green push is the Chesapeake, Va. Signs By Tomorrow (SBT) franchise, which signed on in January with Dominion Virginia Power’s Green Energy Program. All of the energy used at the SBT office now comes from renewable energy sources. SBT—Chesapeake also is in the process of becoming certified with the EPA Green Power Partnership.

On a typical day, the owners’ dogs can be found traipsing around the production area, which features 100 percent recycled rubber tire flooring—comfortable for the five full-time employees, too—or in the store showroom with its beautiful (and sustainable) bamboo floor. The family-owned shop, which opened its doors in 2005, now boasts annual sales of nearly $500,000.

“Our sales are up over last year,” co-owner Lacy Kuller said proudly. “We are refusing to participate in the recession. Hey, everyone needs a sign, right?” she quipped. Business has been good enough to warrant an expansion in 2008, doubling the space of this SBT franchise to 4,000 square feet by moving four doors down in the same shopping center.

Kuller, who owns the SBT store with her husband, Jason, said wide-format print accounts for about 60 percent of their shop’s work. “We do a lot of business-to-business signage,” she noted, “for hospitals, property management firms and interior designers.” Typical sign printing jobs in Chesapeake include interior and exterior vinyl, perforated window vinyl, banner, and flag materials. “We stock a lot of substrates,” Kuller added, purchasing rolls from both Feller and Grimco and calling on a local supplier, Harbor Sales, for sheets. The Kuller family has owned another SBT franchise about 30 miles north, in Newport News, for 10 years.

The firm’s sustainability efforts began as part of the couple’s personal beliefs. Kuller acknowledges, however, that being green has opened doors—and market share. An HP L65500 Latex Printer added last October, which can print up to 102 inches wide, is billed on the firm’s Web site as “the latest technology in eco-friendly digital printing .... Signs By Tomorrow—Chesapeake is one of only five in the world to have this new printer!” Despite more expensive inks required for the new device, SBT refuses to pass that cost of doing green business onto its customers.

The location also houses a 64-inch HP Designjet 9000, added three years ago. While they don’t yet possess a flatbed printer, Kuller said that technology may be in the future.

Inexpensive To Get Into

Out west near Denver, Shawn Allison doesn’t have a flatbed printer either, but he’s actively shopping. “We’ve narrowed it down to three [suppliers],” said the owner and president of Think Big Solutions, a POP and trade show printer in Commerce City, Colo.

Allison, a Cal Poly alumnus, saw the potential of digital printing and started his business 11 years ago. “There weren’t many large-format shops back then,” he recalled. “It was an emerging market that wasn’t saturated, and it was inexpensive to get into it,” said the former account developer at IKON Business Document Services. “Think Big had one employee—me—and now we have 25.” It also has annual sales approaching $5 million and 15,000 square feet of space housing three HP Designjet printers—two 60-inch models: a 5000 (UV and dye) and a Z6100 as well as a super-wide, 104-inch 10000 that’s about a year and a half old.

Allison estimates that 25 to 30 percent of his business is large-format retail signage. Some 30 percent of his total volume comes in via two web-to-print (W2P) platforms, which allow multi-location retailers to be more effective. “Local stores and area managers can customize graphics, creating specials and promotions appropriate to their markets,” he said, “while maintaining corporate standards and streamlining production.” These days, everybody is trying to reduce the cost of procurement, Allison noted, and W2P can help do that. Think Big started with a Printable W2P application seven years ago and added XMPie in 2007.

In addition to paper and vinyl, Allison said fabrics and canvas are “really hot in retail now.” Until recently, he had stayed away from flatbed printers because his firm focuses on high-resolution output. “It wasn’t so much the print quality as the substrates,” he explained, many of which contain blemishes from the factory. But recent improvements made him a believer. The supply chain is key, he noted. Think Big obtains some 90 percent of its media from Sihl Digital Imaging.

Digital Doesn’t Rust

In Ohio, Vista Color Imaging is a digital business thriving near Cleveland’s former rustbelt. Like Pictura Graphics and Think Big Solutions, it has trade show roots, but Vista is no start-up operation. The firm is celebrating its 80th business anniversary in 2009. Founded in 1929 by Cuban immigrant Paul Gallo, the company began as a small, black-and-white darkroom servicing the internal production needs of Gallo Display, a custom trade show display designer and producer. Vista Color Lab (VCL) incorporated in 1970 as an independent entity and formally began business as a custom commercial photographic lab servicing the imaging needs of national exhibit/display producers, ad agencies and corporate clients. Pete Gallo joined his father in 1984, assuming control of VCL operations and today is the company’s owner and CEO.

The film processing and optical enlargement darkrooms are long gone, replaced by the latest technology. In 1991, Vista began its quest to become a digital imaging resource. Today the firm is a graphics display and digital photo company—one of the few, family-owned former photo labs able to fly with the digital times. And, it required business acumen to propel it into the modern large-graphic display markets.

Today, some 50 percent of Vista Color’s business still is trade show related, while another 25 percent of the work printed in the 40,000-sq-ft facility falls in the large-format retail category. Longer-term museum work fills in the gaps, according to Kevin Vesely, Vista’s president since 1994. The firm now has 27 employees and annual sales of around $4 million.

“We do a lot of flatbed [printing],” said Vesely, who says the firm’s trio of devices from Durst Phototechnik includes two Rho 205 large-format flatbed UV inkjet models added three years ago. They can output on media up to 1.55 inches thick and 80 inches wide. They offer production speeds up to 150 square feet per hour at 363 dots per inch (dpi) in four-color process plus white. For even larger signage, it uses a Rho roll-to-roll printer that can image at 11.5 feet wide.

Vista also uses its Rho UV flatbeds to print ice cream cart graphics on the backside 1/16th inch, uncoated Lexan polycarbonite sheets flooded with white ink. Manufactured by Piedmont, the transparent plastic substrate becomes the protective surface for the image, Vesely explained. It has an older Durst Lambda HS, used for backlit menu boards and other retail signage applications, and has developed a regional market niche for over-sized applications greater than 50 inches wide: Its older Océ Lightjet photo laser printers output at up to 72 inches for graphic displays.

And for budget-conscious trade show customers, the firm can print on paper and flexible media up to 60 inches wide with Archiva 6-color, dye-based inkjets at 600-dpi resolution. The aqueous printers are cost-effective, but their speeds are extremely slow, Vesely pointed out. Vista’s next equipment addition, he said, might be a printer that can image direct to fabric.

Based near Chicago, Mark Vruno is a business writer who has reported on the commercial print industry for more than 20 years. Most recently, he was executive editor of Graphic Arts Monthly magazine. Email him at [email protected].