• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

Newbie Intro!

G

Gerry Sweetland

New Member
Hi all,
I am a Special Product Engineer for a site furniture company in Kalamazoo, MI.
My job is to mainly help our customers to adapt our standard product to their special needs… make it longer, shorter, taller, lower, etc. A few months ago we started a line of litter receptacles with special openings for recycling. These units also required signs so we purchased sign making equipment and software and I was given the dubious honor of learning how to make vinyl signs J I hope that the list of equipment and software shows up in my sig, any that’s the way I set things up here and this is my first post so we’ll see what happens.
I have taken a basic level course on Omega Composer but to be honest the software is kicking my butt L I don’t know if it’s because I have a background in CAD (currently using Solid Works 2008) but Composer does seem to be quite different and does not seem to be very intuitive… yet.
So I hope I will not be asking too many stupid or redundant questions and that at some point I can start to contribute as well.
Gerry
 
cptcorn

cptcorn

adad
My advice is to create your stuff in Illustrator or Solid Works. Export as an older AI/EPS (not sure if solid works can... but I'd assume yes) and then import in to Composer...

It takes me five times longer to make what I want in Composer than it does in Illustrator...

BTW Welcome! from MN
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Welcome from PA.......


I'll probably get kicked around for this, but may I ask why your company didn't send your sign needs to a professional sign shop ??​

I know the economy sucks and most furniture stores give great sales pitches and sell furniture for NO MONEY DOWN - NO INTEREST FOR THE FIRST YEAR, but who makes your furniture if you're making your own signs and don't know anything about it. Does the same business sense follow through into your furniture making or are you buying that stuff from overseas ?? :help
 
jscarl

jscarl

New Member
I had the same question. Now how do we earn enough money to come to your store and buy furniture.??
 
WILLIAMS

WILLIAMS

New Member
Hey! Next time I need furniture I'm buying some wood, fabric and a nail gun.

Welcome from PA nonetheless!
 
Craig Sjoquist

Craig Sjoquist

New Member
Welcome to a outstanding forum and people

everybody got started somehow.... they either stepped forward or back sometimes to the side
 
The Big Squeegee

The Big Squeegee

Long Time Member
Gino said:
Welcome from PA.......
I'll probably get kicked around for this, but may I ask why your company didn't send your sign needs to a professional sign shop ??​
I know the economy sucks and most furniture stores give great sales pitches and sell furniture for NO MONEY DOWN - NO INTEREST FOR THE FIRST YEAR, but who makes your furniture if you're making your own signs and don't know anything about it. Does the same business sense follow through into your furniture making or are you buying that stuff from overseas ?? :help
Click to expand...
I'll be the first to kick you on this one. If you were manufacturing something that required constant assembly, would you wait around for another company to do part of that assembly for you? Would you have a company come in and do part of the assembly for you? I know work is getting scarce for some of us but there are things that are best done in house for the best control. Gerry is not doing his business signs. He is making a product.

I make a product as well but I have my stickers made by someone else. If I get the volume that would justify it, I may decide to do my own. Perhaps Gerry's company is in a position of producing enough to justify the costs.
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Dale, this isn’t the place to discuss this, but since you brought it up…. We’ll go :thread-ing for awhile.

Yes, I would bring in-house, that which I could do and could turn a profit on if it was in my realm of work and area of knowledge. In doing this though, I would either already know what I’m doing or have competent people working for me that already know this new found task.

I would not be putting the cart before the horse and telling people on top of what they’re already doing they must learn something else…. which is, as the OP mentioned…. out of his area of expertise entirely. For crying out loud he/she introduced themselves as a Special Product Engineer and not remotely related to the field of making signs. How far am I supposed to go ??

Oh yeah….. we already make many different kinds of signs, decals and various other items for many municipalities for their acquired recycling cans. All the stickers are quite different and in fact we’re doing a run of them next week for about 200 pieces.
​
Maybe you don’t mind people horning in on making your Big Squeegees, but I don’t particularly like someone coming here and asking for this kind of information whether they makes signs for a living or not.

How can you even suggest to Gerry that doing something in-house of which he/she is not at all prepared to do have any better quality control over someone or some company that does it for a living ?? I don’t understand your thinking at all.

Think about it man….. this furniture company goes out and buys equipment that is for basically short run use and expensive to run. Why didn’t they do some research first and get the right equipment for the job. Perhaps they did and some salesman talked them into the set-up they have, but if a company was trying to mass produce something and cut costs…. getting an edge machine ain’t the answer. They have a nobody running the show here and how much do you think it will cost to produce their .50 decal ?? Probably $5. or more til it’s all said and done.
  • Anyway….. how is that going to bring quality in-house ??
  • How is that going to bring the cost of the receptacle down ??
  • How is that going to help the local sign guy that could’ve furnished the graphics for less ??
  • How does this scenario help anyone ??
Their product will now probably cost more than if they had subbed out that which they aren’t capable of doing.


Will I help Gerry ?? Probably, but not until I know he/she isn’t hurting some sign shop in Kalamazoo. :peace!:





.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top