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How big is the UK Sign Industry Market?
Hi, this is my first proper post. So hello to all!
I have kind of a big question as my first one.How big is the (vinyl) sign industry in the Uk and around how much is it worth currently.
I can find results for America but cant find anything for england. I have tried looking up the ‘sic code’ for the sign industry which seems like another hard thing to do as different sites give me different codes or there are several things vinyl design could be under.
Any help on how to find this info would be great, or if you have it, amazing! If anyone could be more specific and get the figures for the south east (if even possible) that would be amazing!
Thanks everyone!
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14 Replies
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Hi, good question! I wouldn’t know where to begin looking to be honest, I imagine it must be a very dificult thing to calculate – especially with ebay elling etc. – the undeclared work anyway.
welcome to the forum!
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Reiss think you are going to struggle with something like this as there are a lot of cross overs with the printing industry for one & quite possibly other industries like advertising & marketing to name just a couple.
Problem is that the work is so varied it would be difficult to sort out what was actually sign work & what wasn’t lol.Can I ask why you would like to know?? Might be you would be better contacting some of the larger suppliers who might be able to give you more info or point you in the right direction
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Welcome, but I have too ask too…why?
Can’t help with the figures sorry.
It will made no odds to about 99.99999% of signmakers as unless you are going to break into the market with a product set to make everybody shift from self adhesive vinyl / become a major player in the supply business with 100million to invest it’s just going to be a fact that’s taking up space in your brain!
…or you plan on going on Dragon’s Den and pitching a product.
Figures for the south east…
if you are looking to see what your potential market share will be – go by town / city and see how many signmakers there are of the size you are initially going to be. 1 man, 2 man, 50 man to see if the market will sustain another and how quickly the clients will hop on board.
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Thank you for your replies!
I went on a Princes Trust course. Done the week’s business enterprise course and now I am having one to ones with a ‘business surgeon’, who is/was a banker. Basically he rips my idea of a business plan apart and tells me what I need to do to get it up and running (in a brutally honest way!)
I had a rough business plan but nothing in the way of perfect figures etc. He asked if I knew what the competition around me was etc. And then asked if I knew how big the market was for signage in the Uk, and in my area (south east). I said I didn’t know. He insisted I found out, so after looking for quite a while I thought I would ask the veterans on here!
I understand everything you have said on here though, which is why I have found it so hard to find anything I think! I reckon he only wanted a rough overall figure to make sure it was profitable and that the industry wasn’t on a major decline etc.
Sorry for the essay! And thanks for your advice.
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Not that long ago you could have got an idea of the competition in your area by looking in the local Yellow Pages, that’s pointless now but Yell.com might be useful for searches by town or county and perhaps adding similar results from Google. Of course the ads give no indication of the size of the company or therefore, any indication of their monetary turnover.
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I looked up my original business plan from 1996, back then the UK market for signs was estimated at 270 million pounds per annum according to what was then the British Sign Association. I don’t have any up to date information, but perhaps the BSGA could help answer this. Have you looked up their website?
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Thanks for the tips Steve.
Cheers Phill, I did come across that site (BSGA) and trawled through it but couldn’t find anything related to what I wanted, I may comb through it again and see if I missed anything.
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If you haven’t started your business you are wasting your time writing a business plan.
When my brother and I started we did the same thing as you. Wrote a business plan. I have a Bachelor of Accounting and Computing and my brother has a Bachelor of Entrepreneurship.
The problem is how do you get accurate figures for writing a business plan? We’d never run a business before so we didn’t know exactly what electricity would cost. What size premises we’d actually need. How much the solicitor and accountant charges. We didn’t know what we really required so we couldn’t get accurate pricing. Sure we still pressed ahead and wrote a plan, no I mean a guestimation.
You’re business plan should be one A4 page. Outline how you are going to help people. Outline you’re point of difference. Outline what financial goals you want to achieve (20% growth year on year).
Use these as the ‘rules’ to run your business to make decisions.
After your first year you will have real data to base your financial forecasts on and have a better idea on what services are profitable and what aren’t. What advantages do you have over your competitors. From there you can remain agile and take advantages of gaps in the market where you have an advantage.
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Cheers for the advice Jason.
I do mostly agree with you. It’s very hard to estimate a lot of things as we don’t know a lot of them, such as electric cost like you said.
A part of me wants to just jump in and go for it, I think this is probably the best way, though you have to stay cautious.
Also it would be interesting to know if you made a profit in your first year. As I have been told it’s almost unheard of, which I thought was really weird?!
Cheers again!
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quote Reiss Cleal:Cheers for the advice Jason.
I do mostly agree with you. It’s very hard to estimate a lot of things as we don’t know a lot of them, such as electric cost like you said.
A part of me wants to just jump in and go for it, I think this is probably the best way, though you have to stay cautious.
Also it would be interesting to know if you made a profit in your first year. As I have been told it’s almost unheard of, which I thought was really weird?!
Cheers again!
Our first two years weren’t profitable. Everything we earn’t we put back into the business. We learnt a lot of lessons which shaped what we are today. The first two years of operation my brother and I didn’t take a cent out of the business.
We only started with $500AUD so basically everything we earned went back in to buy new equipment etc. We had side jobs that supported our personal costs.
I think if we started with backing of say $50,000 it would make more sense to have a business plan etc and have budgets you closely monitor. But for us we just worked our bums off then saw what the result was 6 months down the track. We actually thought we did really well the first two years. It isn’t till you sit down with your accountant that you realise you have a lot more expenses and tax etc that you didn’t realise.
After two years we quickly learned how to price properly, what point of differences we had, why our customers used us, how we could help our customers further, how we could connect with those customers, what their needs really were.
I think its more important to get out there selling instead of working on plans etc. You quickly learn what sells and what doesn’t and how you can help your customers in a way your competitors can’t. That information is best used to shape the direction of your business.
Right now we’re very agile and lean. We’ll listen to our customers and they basically shape the direction of our business. We’re not of the mind build it and they will come. We’re taking more of an approach of let them come and then we’ll build it. We’ve built a business where basically we can invest in the latest machinery and get a return on that investment greater then we would investing in the bank. We also get a wage now which is making up for those two years we didn’t earn anything personally. For us when we started it was hard we were 24 and 18 and hadn’t accumulated a lot of personal wealth and we were still studying full time.
A book that talks about some of the things we learned is a book titled Reworked by Jason Fried. Its a pretty short read from someone whose actually done it.
I’m babbling on a bit now. I’ll share what we use as our ‘business plan’. Its attached to the wall of our kitchen. It outlines how we are to run our business no matter what. All our business decisions are inline with whats on the wall.
Attachments:
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Wow cheers for taking the time for such a detailed reply Jason.
We also have to start off with a fairly low budget, top range for everything probably 5grand at a stretch! But I think it’s satifying starting small and building your way up!
So you are saying buy the basic stuff you need to get going, go do it, learn from experience and mistakes. Thanks for the advice. I think we both have wanted to do that in the backs of our minds anyway!
I took a look at your website, and I must say the business looks impressive, especially that beast of a machine you have!
The rework book looks interesting, just from looking at other bigger businesses and how they run I already agree with what it is trying to say, may look into that more.
Thanks again for your help.
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Jason is a good example of what can be achieved if you have a good head for business, think that is where a lot of people fall down myself included. Look at when Jason joined the forum & it will show you just how far their business has come in a short time. When he joined he had no experience in the sign industry at all, just a thirst for knowledge.
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Awesome to have such great inspiration 😀
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Another one to look out for is Warren Bread, he was the same as Jason, keen to learn, asked loads of questions & had the general right attitude. Warren is now turning out some great work & I am confident he will continue to go from strength to strength.
Have you sat down with your business partner & talked about each of your roles within the business. Obviously he has some experience working in the industry which you presently don’t but that doesn’t mean things need to stay that way as you learn about the industry.
I now believe that being good in business is more important than being good at signmaking, if your good in business you can always hire someone to make the signs but if your good at making signs it is very difficult to find someone who would run the business side.
I’m a good example of how not to get on in business but at my age & only working part time now it doesn’t worry me anymore lol.
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