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Thoughts on sign resellers?
An acquaintance of mine works for a large stationery company, who are advertising they produce everything print related, and now signage & vehicle graphics. Whilst I can see this being great for their customers, I can already imagine the problems occurring.
Traditional print is fairly straight forward, a business card is a business card, with a few options such as laminate, board thickness, same with leaflets.
When we enter the signage arena, things get a hole lot more complicated.
Various substrates, colours, different ways of producing them (cut vinyl or print), then we venture into machined letters, and built ups, where character size can be an issue, choices of colour and substrate again, and we can go further still when we look at illuminated signage, and the electrical feeds to those. On top of this we’ve got that massive variable of SIZE.
Vehicle graphics contain similar variables, production methods, media choices (wrapping vinyl, or polymeric?) cut vinyl or printed vinyl? All of which affect the price.
That’s without mentioning the H&S, and legislation surrounding signage.
The company I know employ a team of telesales, and on the road sales reps. They’re sales reps, not signage experts.
I’ve personally being subcontracted by a similar company to install items they produced, and we ultimately sacked them… promising unachievable deadlines to clients, and expecting everyone to move heaven & earth to maintain their deadline. Passing only part of the information to you, usually to make the job sound easier than before, and not even checking the basics like when a shopping centre allows installations, or what their rules are on window displays.
We delegated the customer to a larger firm who just install signs, and they too subsequently sacked them off, and are slowly forgiving me for recommending them.
We’ve experienced this with traditional print, where huge trade houses output high volume print at low margins, and any Tom, Dick or Harry can buy it and sell it on.
As the print market devalues, are we seeing a shift into signage & vehicle?
With a huge database of B2B customers buying stationery, I’m sure they do very well from marketing these add on services.
Interested in what others think, and how they think it will affect the industry if more follow?
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12 Replies
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Even Screw fix were doing van signs recently though I see they no longer offer this service now. Perhaps they learned the hard way that there was more to it than meets the eye?
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Its obviously not a good thing but surely most of them (as they dont have the experience or knowledge as you explained) will fail miserably.
The customer will have to learn the hard way and realise a one stop shop is not always best.
Vista print is a good example, great for business cards and other stationary but when it comes to magnetics etc…. well its total shit.
I have replaced many sets of magnets where they are only a year or so old. Ask where they got them from and vista always comes up. No laminate and pretty awful designs most the time.As usual cheaper is not always better and people must learn that these large one stop shops normally offer a great price but at poor quality and service.
Like many of you have discussed before the sign game has changed a lot over the last 5-10 years. Now its seems anyone with 5k in their pocket can buy a printer and laminater and try and figure the rest of it out along the way.
Its a tough old game we are in :bangshead:
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There will always be those who shop on price.
Some of these companies can be supplying our very own customers, and then suddenly we find ourselves up against them. They could sell signage at a loss, knowing they’re making profit on the more recurring stationery orders.
I don’t think it’s going to decimate the industry, but it’s not a positive move :puppyeyes:
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This is obviously relevant to ourselves as sign makers, but I think that this is no different to anybody breaking into ‘different’ markets.
It’s the same as when Kwik-Fit branched out from just tyre fitting to brakes, steering, clutches etc. Initially, there was a downturn in business for main dealers because it was cheaper to go to Kwik-Fit.
But the quality of work, materials and longevity of the job wasn’t at the same standard. A lot of the fitters at Kwik-Fit were just that, fitters, not mechanics (or vehicle technicians as they are now called).But then they eventually started to get better at it, with time and experience. But a lot of other companies tried to do the same thing and failed. A lot of main dealers tried to break into the ‘tyre fitting’ industry, but failed.
A lot of us could try and break into the ‘printing’ business and some would succeed and some would fail. Some people are just better at certain things than others and some people can adapt better than others. It’s managing to do both in as short as space of time as possible to continue doing that type of work.The hardest thing for us is trying to weather the storm until the ‘fad’ dies out and people realise that sign writing/vehicle livery/wrapping/sign-fitting is more than just drawing a picture, then cutting/printing it out.
As they say, "Cheap labour is cheap, but not skilled. Skilled labour is skilled, but not cheap".
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It’s OK riding out the storm, and sure some companies will get left behind, but what’s the point if at the end the price has been driven down to all time lows?
Or will a handful survive that planned ahead and have good times?
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:smiles: Prices can’t get much lower ! Its getting stupid.
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Ryanair comes to mind. A shoddy company that has built it’s business model on price alone and treats it’s customers with utter contempt.
It’s the customer that loses out in the long run :awkward:
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I’m sure they’ll get lower… how can it be cheaper to send 100 business cards to the other end of the country, get them delivered durect to the client, than print them ourselves?
Not all customers are price focused, service accounts for something still, and I suppose there’s the H&S aspect too for some customers?
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I wouldn’t worry to be honest, pure re sellers will get on fine until problems occur, customers ain’t gonna be happy when they go back to the reseller who will have no knowledge of how it happened, how it can Be prevented, etc.
Quality I’ll always win in the long game, and for prices to be driven low, corners need to be cut somewhere,
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I come across resellers quite often. There are a few companies who advertise that they manufacture signs in house, but they don’t, all they do is buy & sell. Like its been said, that’s all well & good & good luck to them if they can make that work, but what happens when there is a problem? Who sorts the problem out? I know that if anything ever was to go wrong with something we have manufactured, I can react very quickly to get it resolved, but when you rely on others, that’s when it gets messy.
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We admit we use ‘machinists’ or ‘manufacturers’ for some signs, I don’t see the point in lying to a customer, then when they visit they ask to see where & how it is made. We advise that also when it comes to lead times, as we’re at the mercy of the supplier.
We’ve a new neighbour on our estate, they asked for a price on a sign, obviously too expensive so he purchased it online for £30, and now have an 8x4ft 4mm correx sign screwed to a tatty bit of rotten plywood. :shocked:
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Vista print good for print – don’t make me laugh. Thats like saying stork is the same as lurpack!!!
My business started off in the print industry, we moved into signs, why, coz there are a lot of so call sign companies out there who are not good at it, the ones I dealt with when we out worked. I wouldn’t trust to run me a bath.
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