If your a quality custom electric sign shop in the trade here's something that can separate yourself from the Wannabes and hacks who use nothing but cheap chinese components giving them the ability to bid lower when it comes to LED channel Letters, and claim "LED" which translates the end users thinking that "LED is LED...they last a longtime"
Tell your potential client that your signs come with a 5 worry free year electrical warranty that covers all electrical components AND the labor to replace components in that time AND most importantly, the light output will not go below 70% in that time. If you're more confident in your ability to pick components you could even say 80% in that time.
it's hard to compete with the end users ignorance to electric signs and how long products should last, but I find that that warranty is pretty easy to use as a standard for any shop who builds quality because most LED manufacturers claim 60k to 100k hours of operation as well as their power supplies and they will swap out, BUT...it won't be cheap to rent/pay for a bucket or pay a employee for labor to make a switch or from having to completely re-wire/re-retrofit a sign where they choose poorly just to complete up against high quality with them only able to bring low budget, low rent to the table to compete.
There's two parts to quality, components and "know how" installation, it's easy to kill a LED system when not installed right just like it's easy to kill a long life Neon system.
I always gave reference to signs I installed 5-7 years ago for the potentials to look at so they will know how their signs will look in that time. Any seasoned business owner who has been in business long and had to pay for maintenance will really appreciate what a 5 year truly means versus a industry standard 1 year.
