gvgraphics
New Member
My fiance and I own a very small vinyl shop that opened last July in a very small town with a very over crowded market. On top of that we don't have any money to actually invest into a new business, nor did we know a thing about signs or sign production. Pretty foolish huh? :Oops:
We owned a pretty successful computer repair/sales business for about 4 years. We would design and print our own business cards and brochures on a regualr old printer to save on money. This led to some of our business customers asking if we could do these services for them. That led to one customer asking us if we could do an in store sign for a product they sold in local grocery stores. We have a hard time admitting to customers when we can't do something, so we try to find a way.
We decided to outsource the sign to one of the two local sign shops. The sign shop acted very irritated toward us for bothering them with such a small purchase. The sign we got was an 18" x 24" coroplast sign, single sided with very simple red vinyl lettering, only 3 lines worth. It cost us $150!! When we picked the sign up it had boot marks, dents and dings all over it where it had apparently been walked on.
Being the curious person that I am I decided to do some reasearch on sign making. It all looked very interesting to me so we decided to buy a Stika-12. About a month later we realised you couldn't do much with those and we took our tax return and bought a 24 inch vinyl cutter. We played around with it for a couple of weeks, Taught ourselves the basics of how to cut and apply. Then in July we decided to give it a shot. We closed the computer business in favor of something that allows us some creativity.
We know it will be a long time before we will be successful enough to do this as our only source of income. We have alot to learn about how to produce other types of signs, or where to outsource to, how to market ourselves, pricing, what direction to head in, equipment to buy next, etc. I'm hoping I can gain alot of that knowledge here. I'm in a bigger hurry than he is to get this thing rolling along a little faster and to start seeing some sort of a profit. So I hope nobody will mind the 10 million or so questions I will have in the near future!
We owned a pretty successful computer repair/sales business for about 4 years. We would design and print our own business cards and brochures on a regualr old printer to save on money. This led to some of our business customers asking if we could do these services for them. That led to one customer asking us if we could do an in store sign for a product they sold in local grocery stores. We have a hard time admitting to customers when we can't do something, so we try to find a way.
We decided to outsource the sign to one of the two local sign shops. The sign shop acted very irritated toward us for bothering them with such a small purchase. The sign we got was an 18" x 24" coroplast sign, single sided with very simple red vinyl lettering, only 3 lines worth. It cost us $150!! When we picked the sign up it had boot marks, dents and dings all over it where it had apparently been walked on.
Being the curious person that I am I decided to do some reasearch on sign making. It all looked very interesting to me so we decided to buy a Stika-12. About a month later we realised you couldn't do much with those and we took our tax return and bought a 24 inch vinyl cutter. We played around with it for a couple of weeks, Taught ourselves the basics of how to cut and apply. Then in July we decided to give it a shot. We closed the computer business in favor of something that allows us some creativity.
We know it will be a long time before we will be successful enough to do this as our only source of income. We have alot to learn about how to produce other types of signs, or where to outsource to, how to market ourselves, pricing, what direction to head in, equipment to buy next, etc. I'm hoping I can gain alot of that knowledge here. I'm in a bigger hurry than he is to get this thing rolling along a little faster and to start seeing some sort of a profit. So I hope nobody will mind the 10 million or so questions I will have in the near future!
