National Press for Sign-A-Rama Downtown!!

Check out the great national press we got this week at http://www.signshop.com/picks/Wooten-FranchiseStory.html...


We're proud to share the spotlight with our friends up in Michigan, Bob Chapa and his crew.

Here's an image of the article for your enjoyment!

- Maggie

The Franchise Story
By Jeff Wooten
Note: The following feature is the full-length, unabridged version of the feature in our July 2009 issue that shows how sign makers and business owners have found success with franchises.
Bob Chapa hails from a “sign-intensive” background. Growing up in a family-oriented sign business in Michigan, he found himself painting signs and weeding vinyl as early as seven-years-old. Twelve years ago, he moved out and went to college to pursue an architectural degree. When the first Sign-A-Rama store opened up in his area, he had to think hard about applying because he didn’t have plans to stick with the sign industry.
One night after class, Chapa walked into the store and found the original franchise owner frustrated as frustrated-can-be with his plotter. “In about five minutes, I’d fixed [it] and had him caught up by two in the morning. He hired me on-the-spot to be the first production guy at that location,” Chapa says, noting that, once he completed his degree and had to decide whether to stick with the sign industry, he was promoted to operations manager and soon approached by corporate to open up another store. (A few years later, he bought out the owner of the original store.)
Today Bob Chapa is the president of several Sign-A-Rama locations around the Detroit area (Madison Heights, Dearborn, and Southfield) and was honored as the “Mentor of the Year by Sign-A-Rama in 2007 and the “Franchisee of the Year” in 2008. For the past two years, he has been building a wholesale division that sells channel letters and other electric signs to Sign-A-Ramas and other sign companies nationwide.
Six years ago, Maggie Harlow was general manager for a car dealership but yearning for a new career. Although she was happy, Harlow still wanted to do something different. She thought franchising was the way to go to help her achieve this. “I wasn’t looking for a sign business in general, but Sign-A-Rama met all my criteria for what was important to me in my next career,” she says.
Today Harlow and her husband Brian own and operate Sign-A-Rama Downtown in Louisville, Kentucky and oversee thirteen employees. The store is finding a wide range of projects to work on and a wide range of profits generated by their efforts.
Although Chapa and Harlow come from two completely different backgrounds, they do share a common bond: They’re a successful part of the concept known as sign franchising, where a person purchases the right to operate a business under a particular model or brand and receive support from corporate headquarters or other franchisee owners.
Some independent sign makers still remain leery, but for signage professionals struggling in day-to-day business operations or employees looking to branch out on their own, it’s an opportunity that bears investigating. It’s also an opening for people who aren’t in the industry today but want to go into business for themselves.
Chapa and Harlow both belong to Sign-A-Rama, the largest full-service sign-and-graphics company on the planet with twenty years of operation and nearly 950 stores in over 53 countries today. When the concept first started, the intent was to fill the niche between the large sign company focused on electric signs and outdoor signs and the small sign shop that might be specializing in one or two products. “We wanted to roll out a model that was a full-service sign-and-graphics concept, so that the customers who might be used to going to three or four different places to get their different types of signs could go to one place and be able to get all the signs they were looking for,” says Sign-A-Rama President Jim Tatem (who along with CEO Ray Titus started up the franchise’s first store).
The initial model was (and still remains) moving away from garages and industrial parks and putting sign shops on main thoroughfares with lots of customer parking, good sign exposure, and customer awareness.
One of the main attractions of a sign franchise is the behind-the-scenes support from corporate headquarters that comes from them. Among the help Sign-A-Rama offers: working with owners to find appropriate locations and negotiating leases, initial two-week training at the company’s world headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida (focusing on what it takes to run the business successfully—the products and services to offer, marketing strategies, hiring strategies, record keeping, business organization, customer service, work scheduling, etc.), an owner-based mentoring program and ongoing advertising and marketing programs.
A person interested in a Sign-A-Rama franchise may get into business anywhere from thirty to ninety days after initial contact. After initial contact (and phone conversations), the franchisor sends the interested party a packet of information and passes along contact information to the local support office. The regional vice president and support staff will meet with the prospect face-to-face and give them more detailed information on the company and the brand. Probably most importantly, they’ll take them out and let them meet other Sign-A-Rama franchise operators and give tours of the stores. “The best way to find out about any business is to speak with people who do it everyday,” says Tatem.
It was the offer of camaraderie and cooperation with the other franchise owners she spoke with that convinced Harlow to come into the fold. “The value to me is that I can call other owners who do have the expertise. The real power comes from being able to pick up the phone and call other owners all over the world to learn from them,” she says.
Chapa is also a mentor with the United Franchise Group (parent company of Sign-A-Rama) and finds that he enjoys helping other “family” store owners with their questions—any time and any day. “I recently received a call one Sunday, while having dinner with my family, from someone who’d just opened up a store in India. The owner put me on a conference call for two hours with his new sales team and we went over all kinds of cool stuff. It’s like a whole other world when you get to do that type of thing,” he says.
Tatem breaks down the ingredients for sign shop success into six key areas:
1. Give great quality products to your customer. “There’s enough people out there today that if you don’t do the job right, your customers probably won’t complain. They just won’t come back,” says Tatem. “We want a product that the customer is going to be proud of and will refer others to Sign-A-Rama.”
2. Give great customer service. “We believe you say what you do and you do what you say,” remarks Tatem. “Franchisees have told me that customers will only buy from them (even if their price was higher), because other sign shops wouldn’t return their phone calls or come out to see them.”
Chapa has found that estimating software from Cyrious Software has been a true blessing here. “It’s helped us immensely in job costing and project management,” he says. “We can give customers answers on-the-spot instead of telling them we’ll work it up and fax it over later.
“My graphic designer sits next to the front counter sales person. They’re just as involved in the sales process as the sales rep. Once we know the customer is committing, we have their deposit. We immediately slide their chair over, and they work on the design. They approve the artwork—again cutting out that whole gap of time (sometimes it’s a week to a week-and-half to get the estimate approved and the artwork approved and you’re doing changes back-and-forth). Customers walk out happy; they know the deadline and know when they’re going to get their sign.”
3. Get involved in the community. Join the local Chamber of Commerce, attend the meetings, see what committees you can become involved in. Join other professional and community service clubs and organizations.
Chapa believes some new owners of any sign business are afraid to leave the shop and feel like they need to be there all day answering calls and double-checking quotes. “You have to be out of the office for at least half-a-day. You have to meet new people and go to chamber meetings. It sounds cliché, but it really works,” he says.
4. Advertise. “Keep your name out there in front of the customers in various forms,” says Tatem, who notes that the Sign-A-Rama corporate office offers its franchisee owners support with direct mail campaigns, e-mail marketing campaigns, and Yellow Pages® placement. “We have an advertising fund, and a new franchisee automatically becomes a member of the advertising fund and contributes to it. This obviously helps us promote the brand on a national level.”
Although Harlow is CEO at the location, she finds her primary function is sales and marketing and has found that being part of a large-scale franchise is very rewarding. “We’re able to save some money in advertising, since there are multiple Sign-A-Rama locations in our city. That’s a big expense for a lot of independents,” she says. “Officials also provided me with marketing materials when I first started, so I didn’t have to go out and create a logo and create other designs.”
Chapa finds that the better custom Web sites developed for each of the franchisees is now a strong selling point. “It’s not just one template that’s just plugged in. They do a real good job of customizing your Web site to your local community,” he says.
5. Actively market every single day. “People like to do business with people they know,” explains Tatem. “Go out every single day and meet with between thirty and forty of the local business operators/owners—whether it’s small mom-and-pop, industrial companies, professional offices—and simply introduce yourself and your services. Let them know that you’re there for their advertising, promotional, and marketing needs. We’re in it as a business to help other businesses stay in business.
6. Build the brand. “Try to do things so that when people think ‘signs,’ they’ll think of the franchise,” says Tatem.
One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding the stigma of owning and operating a sign franchise is that “it’s our way or the highway,” with little leeway to experiment or branch out. According to Tatem, this could be further from the truth. “We’re looking for people who are going to be able to implement and follow our system, but this doesn’t mean that we’re looking for robots or people who don’t have a mind of their own,” he says. “What makes a good franchisee for us is someone willing to follow the program but it’s also someone with entrepreneurial spirit who wants to do things that are going to improve, so they build a legacy and a long-term business for themselves.”
Sign-A-Rama Downtown currently specializes in interior wayfinding, environmental branding, and digital printing. Harlow explains that when she first opened up her doors, the organization sold her a certain set of initial equipment package (digital printer, production equipment, plotter, vinyl stock, office equipment, etc.). “But every store will grow and transform. based on their clients,” she says. “My store has laser engraving, rotary engraving, a flatbed printer, and a larger digital printer, but another location does electric signs and channel letters, so its owner uses benders and bucket trucks. The franchise lets us purse what our clients want.”
Chapa’s locations are full-service. Because of their investment in manufacturing equipment (Accu-bend, router tables, etc.), they work on a lot of channel letters and box signs (in addition to digital prints and vehicle wraps). There’s a lot of variety to the signs they create. “Our lobbies are set up such that a customer walks in, and sometimes they don’t even know what they want. By the time they see our whole lobby and we give them a tour, they get excited at all the possibilities,” explains Chapa.
One trend Chapa has noticed: Electronic message centers. His stores did over a million dollars in sales last year in this area alone. “More of the schools are starting to adapt to the technology—and it’s multiple orders,” he explains. “It’s always an expensive product, but once you’re comfortable and you know the product inside-and-out, customers will feel good working with you.”
Although there are a lot of advantages associated with hooking with the might and power of a franchise, know upfront that there is a royalty-fee associated with many franchise programs (although these aren’t as uncomfortable as they sound) and that just because you’re part of a “name brand” doesn’t mean that you can sit back, relax and wait for customers to stream into your business. But there is opportunity for growth, as Chapa and Harlow have shown.