TABLE OF CONTENTS
This Month’s SBI Trivia Question Stumper:
If you fall from a tall building, can vinyl awnings save your life?
For the answer, scroll to the bottom of the newsletter.
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Industry News
[[HOT TOPIC]] Especially in a Bad Economy, Businesses Need Signs
Heading into 2009, the sign industry, like all others, will face tough times navigating an ugly American economy. There is, however, one aspect to our business that may help sign companies and manufacturers alike maintain status quo, if not profitability, during this recession, and it is this notion: Many -- if not all -- other businesses out there rely on signage as a tool to keep their company identifiable and to draw consumer attention away from the next guy.
Take a look at this article from the good people at FASTSIGNS:
Industries are seeking any edge to overcome the economic crisis and keep processes running and staff employed. Competition for every dollar is at an all time high, and the advertising budget is often the first to get cut. One tried and true method still reigns supreme when it comes to helping a business make a visual impression and build awareness--signage.
Advertising during a slow economy creates a competitive advantage. While the number of signage choices available to marketers is growing, here are 10 cost-effective signage options to sell, inform and direct in today's uncertain economic times:
Banners
Banners provide a flexible, portable way to put your message in many places.
Exhibits and Displays
There are a variety of options, ranging from an individual modular system to a combination of elements.
Labels and Decals
Labels and decals can put a company name, logo or message on almost any surface, in various sizes and shapes, and in large or small quantities.
Vehicle Graphics
Full-color digital graphics and wide format prints allow businesses to wrap entire vehicles or apply sign panel graphics or removable magnetic signage to the doors.
Point-of-purchase Signs and Posters
Colorful logos and graphics at your place of business encourage a purchase decision, direct attention and improve message retention.
Window, Floor and Ceiling Graphics
Graphics underfoot, on the walls and up above, turn floors, walls and ceilings into valuable marketing space.
Site Signs
Ideal for construction sites or commercial businesses, site signs can be used for location identification, to inform prospective clients of space availability and to promote the financier of a building.
Architectural Signs
Monument signs, dimensional letters and specially fabricated signs identify a property and reinforce an image. Tenant directories improve traffic flow by directing and informing customers.
Illuminated Signs
Graphics placed on light boxes are ideal for environments with frequent message changes. Edge-lit signs are a unique and elegant way for illuminated signs to convey a message.
Safety and ADA Signs
Protect your visitors, employees and the public at large with ADA and safety signs.
As providers of these products/marketing tools, sign professionals should use this angle and the information above when selling over the next year or so. Remember: what we can give them will help their bottom line.
From all of us at Sign Builder Illustrated and SBI Update, we wish you the best of luck in 2009.
Daktronics Celebrates 40th Anniversary of Incorporation
Drs. Al Kurtenbach and Duane Sander are proof that no limitations can be placed on dreams.
The concept was merely an idea the two had while teaching electrical engineering as professors at South Dakota State University in the 1960s. Kurtenbach dreamed up the name while making a long trip to Dayton, Ohio; he scribbled it out on a piece of paper and tossed in on his dashboard.
It wasn't the only idea Kurtenbach ever filed on his dash. It was, however, the one he's best recognized for today as Daktronics, Inc., the company he and Sander co-founded n December of 1968, celebrates the 40th anniversary of the day it received its Certificate of Incorporation from the State of South Dakota.
Forty years after Daktronics was formed as a business venture with the idea of creating products in the area of medical instrumentation, a renewed sense of direction from the first Board of Directors helped guide Daktronics to become a world leader in audio-visual communication and entertainment systems.
Daktronics did its first install in 1970 when the company placed its first electronic voting system in Utah. The company continued to roll out new products and grew by introducing its Matside wrestling scoreboard in 1971, a time and temperature display in 1972 and the company's first electronic message center in 1972.
"The legislative voting system product line was good for us at that time because it was a very small market and required quite a lot of engineering input for each system," said Kurtenbach while taking a trip down memory lane to discuss the company's coming about. "As far as scoreboards, we started with the wrestling scoreboard that satisfied a need that other scoreboard manufactures had declined to address. There was a need there and it was in a small market that gave us experience so once we were comfortable marketing and selling those products, we felt we could expand and develop a more complete line of displays."
In 1976, Daktronics' wrestling scoreboards were used in Olympic competition. Since then, the company's more complete line of displays has been on hand for Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta (1988), Lillehammer, Norway (1994) and Salt Lake City, Utah (2002). Daktronics has also been the major scoreboard supplier for Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain (1992), Atlanta, Ga. (1996), Sydney, Australia (2000), and Athens, Greece (2004). Daktronics also installed a display in the Wukesong Indoor Stadium that hosted men's and women's basketball during the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Not long after its introduction into the Olympic Games, Daktronics landed a contract with the PGA (Professional Golf Association) Tour in the 1980s that provided a very interesting and challenging task to the company. "The projects for the PGA Tour were very comprehensive systems and required a lot of input and different challenges had to be met," Kurtenbach remembered. "The systems had to be portable with very little power demand because we operated them off of a golf cart battery. They also had to be high enough so they were visible to the crowd, but we couldn't have any stakes in the ground because of the complex irrigation systems on the course. We also had to develop a radio link between the system and a results system to run it."
Daktronics used some new technology it had acquired rights to several years earlier and displays were well received on the PGA Tour. "It was a very significant project for us because we met the challenges and allowed our products to be seen throughout the country on tour with the PGA."
Since then, the company has gone on to tackle even larger challenges, creating the world's largest video display for sports in 2004, and later, topped its own record with the installation of two High Definition screens and the world's largest fascia boards at Dolphins Stadium in Miami, Fla., in 2006.
Most recently, Daktronics set a new milestone by installing the world's largest High Definition display at Kauffman Stadium, home of Major League Baseball's Kansas City Royals, in the spring of 2008.
With numerous projects in the works for facilities like the new TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minn., and the New Meadowlands in Rutherford, N.J., it's easy to think of Daktronics as only a supplier of displays and scoreboards for sport venues.
However, Daktronics currently sells, markets, engineers and manufactures a wide variety of video products, sports products, commercial products, transportation products, sound systems and more.
Since its beginning, Daktronics has grown from a small engineering company operating out of a garage to a world leader in the display industry.
The company operated solely out of Brookings, S.D., for the first 20 years until opening its first company-owned Scoreboard Sales & Service office in Seattle, Wash., in 1988. Today, Daktronics has grown to include over 60 offices on five continents worldwide with products being used on six continents.
Daktronics has also seen growth financially since its inception. It surpassed $1 million in sales in 1977, nine years after the company was started, and in 2000, Daktronics exceeded $100 million in annual sales. Kurtenback and Sander raised funds from private investors in the early 1960s; today, the company is publicly traded on the Nasdaq National Stock Market (DAKT).
"I'm frequently asked how we are able to keep Daktronics growing," wrote Kurtenbach in the 2003 book Daktronics Celebrates 35 Years. "My response is that we just keep trying to put one foot in front of the other so that we keep moving forward. We think positive and we move forward usually by small steps. Occasionally we have a major breakthrough or major project that allows us to take a slightly larger step, but mostly it's attending to the details, getting things right on a day-to-day basis."
Kurtenbach's statement has held true throughout the 40-year history of Daktronics, and combined with great leadership and dedicated employees, explains why today, the company has strong leadership positions in, and is recognized as the world's largest supplier of, large screen video displays, electronic scoreboards, computer-programmable displays, digital billboards, and control systems.
"Through the years we drove markets by offering different products. By constantly improving and adding features to our products, we have been able to cause the markets to have a greater demand for products with much more display capability," Kurtenbach said. "I think that's epitomized now more than every by these large sports systems we produce as well as the large advertising billboards we do."
NEC Releases Digital Signage Able to Measure Ad Effects
NEC Corp recently launched the "eye flavor," a digital signage system consisting of a 46-inch LCD, face recognition camera, content delivery controller and software function to analyze the management and effectiveness of advertisements.Using these components in combination, the system can choose and deliver advertising content that it judges to be effective, NEC said.
The eye flavor determines the gender and age of a pedestrian by using the image shot with its built-in camera and face recognition technology. At the same time, it measures the effect that the advertisement has on the viewer, based on information such as the attributes of the advertisement and the viewer and the delivery schedule of the advertising content.
In light of the measurement results, the system can select advertising content that is expected to be the most effective at the location where it is installed, NEC said.
The effectiveness of the system has already been verified at Granduo Tachikawa, a commercial facility in Tokyo. NEC set up the system at the front entrance on the first floor of the facility for 21 days (Oct 8 to 28, 2008) and measured advertising effectiveness based on the number of viewers and the viewing time by hour, gender, age group and the distance between the display and the viewer.
Specifically, the company analyzed the effectiveness by combining the following three factors. One is the attribute of advertising effectiveness categorized into "imprint (stared)," "impression (watched closely)" and "feeling (glanced)" by the viewing time and the distance from the display. Another is the attribute of the visitor in 14 categories by generation and age group. And the third factor is the delivery schedule of the advertising content shown on the display.
As a result, about 11% of the visitors coming through the front entrance recognized and viewed the advertisement, according to NEC. The system could quantitatively and immediately determine the advertising effectiveness, which could only be determined by conducting a survey in the past, the company said.
New Appointments
Permlight for Signs
, a provider of LED lighting for signs and a division of Permlight Products, Inc., it has expanded to the United Kingdom to manage increased demand for LED signage solutions from overseas customers. To support this expansion, the company named Guy Young as national sales manager, United Kingdom.
Prior to Permlight for Signs, Young worked for Sign Gear Systems Ltd, as sales manager, where he was responsible for selling TridonicAtco LED systems and worked on animated effects for LED lighting applications. He also was influential in supporting the sales and marketing initiatives for other leading sign companies including: KBS Signs, Trojan Signs and Stocksigns.
Meetings and Events
FEBRUARY
Feb 23 - 24: United Applications Standards Group testing, held at 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota. For more information, call 612/209-9703 or visit www.usag.org.
Feb 24 - 26: Digital Signage Expo, Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada. For more information, visit www.digitalsignageexpo.net.
Feb 26 - 28: Graphics of the Americas 2009 Conference & Expo, Miami Beach, Florida. To learn more, visit www.graphicsoftheamericas.com.
Sponsored Links
DPSBanners.com --
DPSBanners.com offers large format digital printing on vinyl banners, mesh banners, magnetic car sign and flatbed printing on foam board, Gator Board, Coroplast and more! Wholesale to the trade, best prices! Order Online! 1-888-790-2665. www.dpsbanners.com
This Month's Trivia Answer:
Find out this month's trivia answer by clicking here: Awning Jump Video
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For in-depth coverage of these topics and other
sign industry topics, check out
www.signshop.com
ATTENTION ADVERTISERS and SUBSCRIBERS:
Coming up in the January 2009 issue of
Sign Builder Illustrated,
feature articles on:
ADA Installation
Digital Printing Growth Management
Dimensional Monuments
LED Message Centers
P-O-P Installation
Vinyl Tools
ATTENTION ADVERTISERS and SUBSCRIBERS:
Coming up in the February 2009 Digital Sign Expo issue of
Sign Builder Illustrated,
feature articles on:
Large Format Digital Printing
Dimensional CNC Routers
Electronic Digital Signs
LED Channel Letters/Sign Cabinets
HDU Sign Blanks
Vehicle Graphics Vinyl
Contact your ad sales representative to reserve your space today.
As the premier e-newsletter for the sign industry, SBI Update encourages readers to send feedback on what you like, what you'd like to see, and any other comments you might have. To do so, send an e-mail to Managing Editor Chris Ytuarte at cytuarte@sbpub.com.
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© 2008 Simmons-Boardman Publishing
345 Hudson St., 12th Floor • New York, NY 10014
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The MBX Vinyl Zapper from Montipower quickly strips vinyl lettering, graphics, and reflective tape with minimal adhesive residue.
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Mimaki's next generation CJV30 Series is an integrated print/cut system that automatically contour cuts without any in-between steps. The CJV30 is fully loaded with features and bundled software that deliver unmatched productivity and flawless print quality. Available in four sizes for a wide variety of applications. For information, click here: Mimaki USA
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Outsourcing to Bloomingdale Signs by Tomorrow can allow your company to expand product mix without the expense of additional machinery. We offer GRAND FORMAT roll-to-roll printing up to 16' wide and FLATBED printing up to 6.5' x 10.5' at WHOLESALE PRICES. To visit our Website, click on: www.bloomingdalesigns.com
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Sign Builder Illustrated presents:
Vehicle Graphics 101 Check out this special SBI supplement for all the information you need to get started, get good, and get profitable in the world of vehicle graphics. From wrap schools and required tools, to marketing your skills and paying the bills, this How-to supplement has it all. Check out the digital version here:
Vehicle Graphics 101
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Sign Builder Illustrated:
The How-To Book Vol. 1 Learn secrets to fabricating neon, illuminating with LED, sandblasting signs, applying paints, cutting and printing vinyl, and more in this 288-page, full-color reprinting of Sign Builder Illustrated's trademark How-To articles. To visit the How-to Book Web site, click on: SBI How-To Book
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Sign Builder Illustrated
Buyer's Guide 2008
Published twice per year in March and September, the Buyer's Guide lists manufacturers, distributors, and sign companies that comprise the industry in the U.S. and Canada. SBI Buyer's Guide
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Sign Builder Illustrated
Goes Digital With live hyperlinks to video clips, advertiser information, and other features, SBI Digital offers the newest online technology with the familiar layout of a hardcopy issue. To view an example, click on:
SBI Digital Magazine
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Daktronics Turns 40