Premises Setup

[Gavin MacMillan]

Some of us are crammed in you know, our country just isn’t big enough for all the signmakers to have workshops the size they want!

Make the sure the tearoom is big enough!

Good luck, it all sounds fantastic and I’m very jellous!

G

[David Lowery]

Don’t forget to have a exposed brick wall each area!

You will probably do this a lot:- :banghead:

Dave

[Craig Bond]

Wow

That is some space!

I moved to a 900 sq/ft place last year and still have room to swing the cat!!

Though, I am expecting three new machines next month and still have to keep the vehicle bay free. Claustrophobia is going to be a problem 🙂 🙂

[Jason Xuereb]

Cheers guys.

We’d rather get a premises that would could lease more easily later down the track in the event anything happens with the business. This sized premises is a pretty ideal size for alot of business that are small to medium. Anything smaller we’d be limiting ourselves.

Will let you know when we move in 🙂

[Jason Xuereb]

It’s happening a lot sooner than we expected. Now if it stops raining they can do the concrete for the car park and we can start building the office & print room.

[Hugh Potter]

are ya sure it’s gonna be big enough ? 😮 😮 😮

lucky git !

[Saph-D]

Could have a barn dance in there ! ( alongside the swimming pool, bar – – – )

You’ll have great fun doing it up, make sure you post pics along the way.

(wanders off muttering about money, attic studio’s, wine )

[Peter Normington]

first thing you will need is good staff to help pay for the rent!
you are certainly upgrading from home to the size of regional if not national company, good luck!

Peter

[Phill Fenton]

Just what I was thinking – 4000sq. ft is a lot of rent and rates to be paying each month. A big jump from working from home.

Good luck 😀

[Jason Xuereb]

Hey guys,

It’s a lot bigger then it looks. Once the mezzanine office goes in and the 60sqm print finishing room etc goes in it will look a lot smaller and fuller.

The rent and rates aren’t so bad. Yes they are a lot more then working from home but it opens up another side of the business we are working into which are the vehicle wraps etc. working from home doesn’t let us do a lot of jobs at once. We just don’t have the space. I will admit we did get two rather big jobs that have put us ahead of where we thought we would be. Now these two clients also provide ongoing work which can basically cover our over heads month to month.

I am doing another Mactac course with Robin Boes next week then the Avery course the week after. Then I will wrap our vehicles to show what we can do. I haven’t completed a full wrap as of yet just partial ones so it’s going to be a good experience.

We will be taking one an apprentice at the end of the year or maybe two. We live next door to a technical school which has a very good sign making course with about 120 students finishing each year. I must admit some of their work is better then some of the things we produce. We met the director of the course at the Sydney show and he was a very nice guy.

We are aiming to grow a fair bit over the next few years so just like our printer we bit the bullet and went for it.

Will keep you posted.

[George Kern]

one thing you may certainly want to take into consideration is putting a drop ceiling in for your printing and office area…it will take much less to heat in the winter and cool in the summer and worth the money up front because you save that much in energy costs. We did that to ours last year and I cannot tell you how much our gas bill went down because those big industrial heaters use A LOT. We kept the install bay open for obvious reasons (trailers, box trucks)

[Shane Drew]

Gee Jason, glad its you and not me mate.

Most of the bigger shops here in Qld are downsizing. Its a pretty competitive market now, especially now that Roland are renting soljet machines to just about anybody. No upfront capital required at all, just have to be able to pay a nominal rent and maintenance, every T,D & H is getting a machine now.

Before we sold our big sign business in 96, we found and secured the business first, before we moved to bigger premises.

If your targeting wrapping, you are entering a business arena with a lot of the big boys with big sales budgets and lots of staff.

Frankly, the specialist wrappers are pumping out vehicles faster and cheaper than I can dream of doing it.

I apologise if I seem negative mate, its not my intention, just suggesting caution. We’ve had several ‘rock solid’ sign shops close their doors this year, some involuntary, and others because the money is too hard to come by.

Then you’ll have little two man companies like you are now, picking the eyes out of the good jobs, beating you on price, turn around and service.

I’ve been there mate, I’m making better money now, doing less, than when I had 4, 6, 10 staff. Less turnover, better margins.

Remember the bigger the growth steps, the bigger the stumbles 😛

Now that I have got that off my chest, I wish you every success mate. Put in the hard yards when you are young, you may be able to live like John Childs when you get to his age :lol1:

[Jason Xuereb]

Cheers guys,

One thing I should mention is that we aren’t only to be running our sign business from here. We have our now canvas printing service launching October 1st which is separate to our sign business. We also have another couple of ventures that we will need the space for. These will all be based around printing but the products are unique or the service is.

Also I should mention my brother and I still live at home so our living expenses are virtually nil and we don’t have families etc to support.

Before entering into all this we did a risk assessment and the worst case scenario is that we loose everything. We don’t anything personally and we’ve accepted that this risk is worth taking. If it doesn’t work out I can always fall back on my accounting and computing degree and go back to bean counting 😛

Will keep you posted.

[Jason Xuereb]

Hey George,

The printing room is going to be

2.4 metres high and the roof will be insulated. It will be basically self contained in the factory.

Is there anything else I should consider?

[Jason Xuereb]

UPDATE: This deal has fallen through. Which is the bad news.

The good news that we just signed the contracts to buy our own place jointly with our parents. It isn’t finished as of yet but it’s bigger then what we were going to lease and is just over 500m2 including the office.