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Working With LED Fuel Price Signs
By Joe Ing
One of the noteworthy up-and-coming trends in the industry are LED fuel price signs for the petroleum industry (mainly those digital price displays featured at gas stations and other such retailers). These displays offer a number of advantages to end-users: brighter digits, the option to change multiple signs from inside the store or a remote location simultaneously, the reduction of employee liability, and a more contemporary/fresh appearance to name a few. For sign shops, these displays present an appealing profit-making opportunity. The key is understanding how to properly sell these displays to your customers.
It all begins with research. “Understand what the customer is trying to accomplish,” Joseph Wilson, President/CEO of FutureMedia Displays of Carrollton, Texas, and a company that specializes in the design, manufacture, and support of advanced LED display systems. (FutureMedia currently offers more than fifty models featuring multiple fonts, multiple sizes, multiple appearances, multiple digitals, etc.) “One of the things that makes it easier for sign companies to come across as consultants in this area is being able to convey information to ultimately bring the customer the most optimized solution. Much like any consulting situation, if you give good advice, you generate good value for the customer and you enhance your credibility and relationship with the customer. Should you come up with the wrong recommendation, it could significantly backfire.
“Make sure you do the customers justice. Anybody can call up a few people and get the lowest price. A sign shop needs to provide advice that customers will appreciate over time. They’re truly able to position themselves to bring the right type of product and the right type of assistance to the clients.”
LED fuel price signs have really increased in popularity because of a desire to keep up with the times. “This trend is being supported by the frequency and convenience of price changing,” states Wilson. “Many old signs didn’t support pricing above $1.99. This has required some retailers to upgrade their signs on system-wide basis to accommodate higher prices.
“Fuel price signs are on 24/7/365 and are vital to fuel stations. A few hours of downtown can lead to tremendous lost revenue for a fuel station. LED digits designed for applications such as scoreboards were never intended for continuous use and therefore should not be expected to fare well in this application. Making a reliable product in fuel price signs is more challenging because they need to be viewable at all times, in all weather conditions, and from a wider angle (for traffic passing by).”
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Another improvement in LED price signs is the availability of more color choices. The most common LED colors are red for fuel grades, and green for diesel. Other less common choices include amber and blue. “We expect our new white to become a popular option, especially for retailers utilizing white in their corporate IDs,” says Wilson. “These options accommodate preference, as well as local regulations, which may prohibit certain LED colors.”
Another nice thing about the petroleum market is that if you’re able to sell a product to a particular marketer or retailer, they’re usually multiples. “If you’re able to actually sell them one, it’s likely that you’ll be getting multiple orders,” further explains Wilson. “So the revenue stream is there. Very few opportunities are limited to one location.
Bring up LED displays to anyone in the sign industry, and chances are good that the topic of ordinances will come up. This technology constantly appears to be in the crosshairs of communities that are trying to prevent their streets from becoming Las Vegas boulevards. The good news is that these LED fuel price signs don’t typically face this type of scrutiny.
“LED price signs, for the most part, are static,” explains Wilson. “They don’t flash. For the most part, they change maybe once a day or a couple of times a week. Under those circumstances, they obviously function in a totally different fashion than the other type of LED signs that are considered to be more ‘intrusive.’
“From that standpoint, a sign company may feel that this type of sign doesn’t fall in the same category as some other type of LED. If there’s a perceived issue with an ordinance, sign makers can [present the facts] in front of the city council and the folks in charge of issuing exemptions, and a lot of times, they end up getting it approved simply be allowing the appropriate authorities to fully understand what it is they’re approving and now letting it fall into the ‘generic’ category of LED sign.”
Still there are electrical objections that can be raised from these types of signs, but there are ways to appease these opponents. “One of the objections that some municipalities have is attaining a maximum brightness level that’s permissible in a particular community,” says Wilson. “We get around it by actually offering the customer with means to calibrate it to a specific preference and ordinance. With our signs, we can actually reduce the maximum brightness of the unit to accommodate a specific municipality. An inspector might come in with a light meter and object that the sign is too bright for a municipality. Using our control units on the fly, we can pretty much adjust it to meet these requirements.
“Another thing we’ve seen is that some cities don’t allow the use of red or green colors because they believe these can be too confusing to some people. Some people even associate it with stoplights. To solve this, some customers use blue LED lights.”
A fuel display system is a serious investment, and as Wilson reiterates, a sign company needs to do its homework. “That includes researching manufacturers, their experience, their years in business, and their reputation in the industry,” he suggests. “LED systems aren’t created equal. The quality difference between high-end displays and cheaper units is substantial.”
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