SignCraft Magazine, March / April 1999

Follow Up Article: Sign It Signs

Nancy Beaudette and Noella Cotnam of Sign It Signs were first featured in SignCraft in July/August 1991. Having started out in the kitchen of a farmhouse in the early '80s, they had recently moved into a 2,000 sq.-ft. shop. Now, eight years later, they operate out of a 5,000 sq.-ft. shop and have learned how to accomplish more in less time. As a result, they're enjoying the rewards of a well balanced, satisfying life and career.

What's new:

"Last year, we moved into our new shop," says Nancy. "With 5000 sq.-ft., we have plenty of room for everything we've wanted in a shop. We have nice offices up front and an attractive showroom, plus an area designated for the computers and express signs."

"We have a huge paint and finishing area," Noella adds, "with high ceilings so we can flip 4-by-8s over without hitting the ceiling. We can lay out 20 jobs at a time and not have to move them until we're done. There is also a large area in the back for woodworking and routing on our 408 Sabre. We have six computers now, plus the Gerber equipment and Edge."

"We also have a Web site at www.signit-signs.com," says Nancy. "We use the Internet to send and receive files from our clients. We can even take a digital picture while we're working on a job and send it to the client."

Running the business:

"One of the big things we've accomplished in the past few years was getting better control of our business," says Nancy. "All along we continued to learn how to run it more efficiently. In 1992, we hired a business consultant who came in and analyzed our business. We contracted him for a year, and he taught us how to gather and track information about the company and how to analyze that information.

"Now, we no longer make decisions based solely on intuition. I think intuition is a good thing, but we can make solid decisions based on what we know, not just a gut feeling. That's been a tremendous asset to us. Like most small commercial shops, we are artistic first, and the business side was a little tougher to get a handle on. Hiring the consultant and keeping him on as long as we did was the best money we ever spent." (Watch for an article by Nancy and Noella on working with a business consultant in an upcoming issue of SignCraft)

On the staff:

"Probably the most significant change in the last year has been the addition of an office manager here. In 1991, we had an office manager, but her role was not the same as our current office manager, Lyndon McPhail. He helps in sales and everyday operation of the shop, and he does the tracking for us and helps to analyze the information. Lyndon has a strong marketing background, and he also handles job costing, scheduling, inventory control, and many other responsibilities that takes the pressure off Noella and me.

"We feel that both of us should be doing what we love to do the most, which is the hands-on work. I meet with the clients and do most of the designing. Noella is in production and does the carving and fabrication.

"We're a smaller staff that we were a year ago, but we produce more and have better control; we're more efficient overall. I think that goes hand in hand with the new shop and the new equipment.

"In addition to our office manager, we have Suzanne Stang, who is well versed in just about everything. She came 'green' into the sign industry; she's actually a biologist. She works with Noella, running the router and the Edge, finishing the signs, and helping with fabrication."

Changes in the market:

"Our market has grown and expanded in both area and product. Over 80% of what we produce is what we call specialty signs. They require specialized design or fabrication as opposed to express work. We still get a lot of calls for the express work and we still offer it locally to this market base, but it's certainly not the majority of our business."

"We do a lot of out-of-town work," adds Noella. "And we do work for other sign companies who don't carve or produce wood signs. We also export to the U.S. on a regular basis, due in part to the attractive Canadian dollar."

Keeping a regular work week:

"One of the other interesting things that has changed is how we've learned to balance our workweek," says Nancy. "We work from 8:30 to 5:00, Monday through Friday and we have the weekends off. A few years ago, we would have been working a 12 to 14 hour day on a regular basis. And surprisingly, we were doing a lot less work and with a lot larger staff.

"We were able to create a regular workweek by becoming extremely organized in both the office and in production, and by knowing what we well, and by not trying to sell something that isn't going to be profitable. By doing our tracking and job costing, we could easily identify the products that didn't make us any money or that took too long. It turned out that 80% of the time they were jobs we didn't like to do anyway. So we eliminated them from our roster. That's one simple way to alleviate that extra burden which can be so time-consuming.

"Lyndon handles all of the job scheduling for us, which helps everything progress smoothly. Every morning we have a five-minute meeting. Even though there's only four of us in the shop, these meetings are important. They're short and to the point; we don't want to get bogged down by the meeting. It's a form of touching base, to be brought up to date on what each person is working on that day, and to make sure we've all remembered what our priorities are, then away we go."

On partnerships:

"We're blessed with a unique relationship. Noella and I have been working together for 17 years now. We're both in tune with good design, so Noella can critique my work, and I can critique hers. We challenge each other to do the best we can. That's one of the great things about a partnership.

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