Signs 101 Membership Qualifications

[Just Another Sign Guy]

Does this look familiar to anybody?

If you are making or are seeking to make signs and graphic products for your own needs, you have entered a community where you are not welcome. Please do not attempt to register.

In my interprtation, an in-house sign shop would fall under "own needs"
I'm still for letting nearly anyone share info here, but maybe this needs to be re-worded.

not to mention the teams of motorcycle riders, go kart racers, wanna-bee 4 wheel racers of every variety who do nothing other than letter their own 'team' vehicle's or maybe their friends for a 6'er...and then there is the roofer, plumber, drywaller, alarm installation co., the list goes on and on who only make their own signs because they don't like the prices the professionals charge...and obviously they can do it better and cheaper...until the shtf after they've wasted a tremendous amount of materials 'teaching' themselves....

 

[Mosh]

The reason I have went from 4 printers to one is my two major customers desided to go in-house...they put 11 guys out of work.

 

[skyhigh]

I'm more against the probability of large companies conversing amongst themselves at various conventions they attend, where we're totally not invited... and discussing where to get information to get their companies into the full sign package market on their own.

Good point Gino!! An airline convention would include support companies such as Food Service, Electronics, Fabric Suppliers, Beverage, Trash....ect. The list would go on and on. Does anyone here do work for these companies?

Bottom line for me is, what is the main intent of this community?

1. To inspire, encourage, share, educate, learn with like minded individuals from different walks of life. Different world views, and different employment scenarios.
2. Focus on the business end. Share tactics, discuss frustrations and victories of being an Entrepreneur.

If the main focus is #2, maybe this isn’t the place for me and other in-house professionals.

I think its both!!! But I will say.... without #2 you can't have #1. I think priority has to be #2.

I am a sign shop owner, who has to focus on keeping my customers. You are an employee of an Amusement Park. Should work get slow, you would probably still have a job doing some other park function. yes/no? No offense, but as an employee (of a totally un-related business), you do not have the same responsibilities as I do.

Signs101 is not all about comradery.....thats just what makes it fun!!!

I can't pay my bills with fun.

 

[Gino]

Good point Gino!! An airline convention would include support companies such as Food Service, Electronics, Fabric Suppliers, Beverage, Trash....ect. The list would go on and on. Does anyone here do work for these companies?

We were invited to one or the largest Food Shows in this country and I believe it was in Indianapolis...... year after year. They wanted us there because of our knowledge of the food industry. They want us there to try to make sales and supply other Food Companies. Kinda checked it out and just like so many other businesses.... they have vendors there showing you how to cut so many middlemen out of the picture it ain't even funny. And yes, there are many vendors there exchanging ideas, suppliers and possible customer bases..... and so much more. I was at a food show last year where there was three stands there showing anyone there how to get their own supplies and machines.... just ask how to bring these items in-house. It also had awning companies, silk screening companies and pop displays and where to get this stuff. They are our suppliers to the trade, dealing behind our backs to our customers.


I think its both!!! But I will say.... without #2 you can't have #1. I think priority has to be #2.

I am a sign shop owner, who has to focus on keeping my customers. You are an employee of an Amusement Park. Should work get slow, you would probably still have a job doing some other park function. yes/no? No offense, but as an employee (of a totally un-related business), you do not have the same responsibilities as I do.

Signs101 is not all about comradery.....thats just what makes it fun!!!

I can't pay my bills with fun.

As someone mentioned, it is a cut-throat business, but not just the sign business..... just business in general. With so many businesses going overseas and the remaining comapines just trying to stay afloat.... it doesn't make sense to purposely go against what this site meant for most of us to join and build it up, just to have these bigger companies come in a reap all the rewards we all have striven to make as our industry. Safer for us, not consumers that can out buy us and by-pass us due to sheer size and buying powers.

You wanna be big hearted and invite these people in because they found a loop hole around the rules, don't you think the rule are fine the way they are and we need to stop analyzing our rules to make them fit the needs of our customers ?? We're becoming just like our governemnt.... re-thinking perfectly good rules to death, until everyone just says.... ah, the heck with it, just let 'em in. If things get outa hand, we'll just change the rules again. Too late, the harm will already have been done, by the time you realize it. All you need to do is put one shop out of business because he/she came here with different rules and now you change them to fit greedy minds....... you are the reason, not the big guy you left in. You knew their intentions beforehand and chose to ignore the facts.

​

 

[Techman]

I'm more against the probability of large companies conversing amongst themselves at various conventions they attend,

Those huge companies do not run by guessing how to save a buck here and there.
They are statistically driven. It's a numbers game. Every thing is measured by some cost accountant. They do not go to conventions talking about how to save a couple of hundred bucks an their next panel. Their budgets are in the billions range.

We are nothing but a bunch of ants worrying about something that will never concern them. They will exist whether we care or not. They will get their needs met whether they are allowed here or not. Wondering if they should be allowed here or not is a exercise in mental chatter.

 

[TyrantDesigner]

Absolutely not in the same genre.

Those companies large enough to operate a genuine sign shop often have facilities that 89% of us only dream about. I know of one corporate shop that employs 16 full time technicians. How in the world could any one even think that a lawn care handy man and a corporate sign shop are in the same league?

I also know of one government owned park that has their own sign shop that just hired a genuine sign man that many of us know personally to operate said sign shop. Should he be dissed simply because his shop is an offshoot facility?

Sheesh, there are some in here that barely own a plotter let alone have graphics knowledge. Should they be dissed too?




Its not the airplane companies. Its the sign shop and the genuine sign makers many of which have years of experience making signs who will out paint, out letter and out design many here that operates within the airplane company.

Let them in. They brothers in the brush.

I have to agree, if Joe Lawn Care wants to employ actual sign shop employees to do his signs FULL time ... let him in ... otherwise he's just a hobbiest at best. If a Corporation with a full time in house sign shop wants to join ... I say let them ... if you're feeling uneasy about it ... charge them for admission to the forum. I think if a Company wants to pay $200 a year to join ... that would weed out the Joe Lawn Cares at an exponential rate.

 

[Fred Weiss]

As someone mentioned, it is a cut-throat business, but not just the sign business..... just business in general. With so many businesses going overseas and the remaining comapines just trying to stay afloat.... it doesn't make sense to purposely go against what this site meant for most of us to join and build it up, just to have these bigger companies come in a reap all the rewards we all have striven to make as our industry. Safer for us, not consumers that can out buy us and by-pass us due to sheer size and buying powers.

You wanna be big hearted and invite these people in because they found a loop hole around the rules, don't you think the rule are fine the way they are and we need to stop analyzing our rules to make them fit the needs of our customers ?? We're becoming just like our governemnt.... re-thinking perfectly good rules to death, until everyone just says.... ah, the heck with it, just let 'em in. If things get outa hand, we'll just change the rules again. Too late, the harm will already have been done, by the time you realize it. All you need to do is put one shop out of business because he/she came here with different rules and now you change them to fit greedy minds....... you are the reason, not the big guy you left in. You knew their intentions beforehand and chose to ignore the facts.

​

While this thread was initiated by the registration of a major airline, it is more about what is happening in the arena of internet networking and observing what is going on elsewhere. In particular, the site LinkedIn.com has some phenomenally good in-depth discussions going on that I would love to see going on here. What is interesting to note is that no one there is looking for anything from others except that they are involved and knowledgeable in some aspect of design, production or technical problem solving as it relates to the sign manufacturing processes. Participants range from sign companies to equipment and supply manufacturers to in-house sign shops. Most contribute and most benefit. Any number of our better informed members are spending their time there in preference to here.

The other side of the observation is places like Facebook where, again, one can find lots of members who have reduced or terminated their participation here. The conversations are much different but the fact remains that there is a growing loss of participation at Signs 101 to competing venues.

The original intent of our new member screening was to keep end users out who should be dealing with professionals earning their livings making signs. In my mind we were talking about small businesses at the local level who bought enough signs to think they could cost justify getting anything from a Chinese cutter to a Versacamm. That effort has served us well and I have no plans that would change that. This thread poses the question as to whether a zero tolerance approach, that excludes very large new members who might well raise the level of discussion here, serves the best interests of our existing members.

Finally, I would raise the question as to the attitude of some members to be overly suspicious of new members who may not express themselves well. I spend a large part of my day screening registrations yet some members act as if that had never taken place. I don't think sarcastic remarks and offensive questioning by some existing members of the motivation of a new member based on prejudgment and incomplete information helps Signs 101.

 

[Fred Weiss]

I have to agree, if Joe Lawn Care wants to employ actual sign shop employees to do his signs FULL time ... let him in ... otherwise he's just a hobbiest at best. If a Corporation with a full time in house sign shop wants to join ... I say let them ... if you're feeling uneasy about it ... charge them for admission to the forum. I think if a Company wants to pay $200 a year to join ... that would weed out the Joe Lawn Cares at an exponential rate.

A couple of other posts have made similar suggestions so I'll give you my feedback on that. Signs 101 offers free membership to all whom we accept. We offer paid subscriptions that enhance the free membership. One of the benefits of a paid subscription is the privacy to have more candid discussions. Yet the overwhelming majority of our active members do not partake of it either by subscribing or by posting there instead of in the open, free forums.

I do not believe that offering a pay before you're accepted type of plan would be anything other than insulting and a waste of my time. It would be subjective and arbitrary at best and would have nothing in common with the previously adopted mission of Signs 101.

 

[Bigdawg]

First of all I applaud the hard work Fred does in screening those that try to enter our little community. I've done pretty much nothing here of late so his work has been even harder, but I have seen some of those registrations and I understand the time it takes to look at each and every one and follow up on it. Of course one or two may slip in that really shouldn't be here... but all in all there is a reason they were let "inside" our door. And we ought to give Fred the courtesy of our respect that he knows what he is doing.

I say someone working in an in-house sign shop is generally every bit as much of a sign-maker as a lot of the people already here. And in the larger shops they have resources and training that many members on this forum could benefit from. I sure don't know everything about signs and frankly I don't think any one person does.

If the argument is that they are taking work from your shop - wrong. The worldwide economy, the availability of equipment and the advent of the internet are what is taking that type of work from your shop. If a company can more affordably do a job in house - they are going to. It is the nature of a free market and a profit/loss sheet. You do it. I do it. Every company weighs the benefits and negatives to doing something in house. And again - in my opinion - a signmaker is a signmaker... and a hack is a hack. Not usually too hard to spot the difference.

So Joe with his lawn business and vinyl cutter probably won't get much help - or much good help. But that is our choice to pick who we want to share our knowledge with. So I think we should let 'em in... and reserve the tar and feathers until such time that they have shown they deserve it. If we don't quit running the new kids out of town, pretty soon the town will die.

 

[Dean Fowell]

Good Job Fred,

 

[iSign]

First of all I applaud the hard work Fred does in screening...

...we ought to give Fred the courtesy of our respect that he knows what he is doing...

...So Joe with his lawn business and vinyl cutter probably won't get much help - or much good help. But that is our choice to pick who we want to share our knowledge with. So I think we should let 'em in...

good post Stacy, but just for clarification... your closing paragraph almost sounds like letting in Joe Lawn... but you just mean Joe Airline, right?

 

[Speedsterbeast]

Finally, I would raise the question as to the attitude of some members to be overly suspicious of new members who may not express themselves well. I spend a large part of my day screening registrations yet some members act as if that had never taken place. I don't think sarcastic remarks and offensive questioning by some existing members of the motivation of a new member based on prejudgment and incomplete information helps Signs 101


Amen Fred, I am a member of several other forums (not sign related) but the condecending attitude towards new members here really stands out compared to what I've seen elsewhere. Thankfully the time and patience most people offer here still outweighs all the negativity. Although not as much as it should.

I'm repeating myself from an old post, but if people do not want to offer help to someone because they are new or viewed as not worthy due to circumstances (in-house etc.) then they can move on and help those they feel are worthy and hopefully leave the demeaning comments to themselves.

 

[Bigdawg]

I'm saying if Joe slips in - his hackiness will show itself right quick. And we'll get out the tar and feathers...

Anyone who makes signs for a living should be welcome here. Joe the Lawn Guy doesn't make signs for a living - he makes signs because he thinks it's easy and he'll get rich like all the rest of us are ... and oh yeah he's a cheap ass too...

But Joe the Airline Guy does makes signs for a living... he's employed by a sign shop (albeit internal) and whether he makes minimum wage or union wages... that means I'll give him the presumption of being a real sign person. Even if that in-house sign shop is only one or two people.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Most of this thread is amusing.

Imagine you're an airline, you pick up your phone, you call roland or hp, and say, hey, point me to your distributor, we wanna set up an in house shop. Also, do you have any training seminars, sessions and the such? We have a team of 10 we'd like to send out on an application course, machine maintenance course and whatever else you can recommend.

Do you think anyone at Roland or HP would take the same attitude as some of the people here and say "nup, sorry, you're not a sign shop".?

Without even joining s101, they will get better training than most of us here, more attention, grade A response time on problems and faults. They can call hp or roland and get a more qualified answer than most of us can provide.

Do you really think that a vendor won't tell them the secrets to the trade? Hell, they'd be telling em more than they ever taught any of us that's for sure. Go and spend half a mil on equipment in a week and see how much you need access to a forum to find out little secrets and head cleaning tips and hints. You would be paying a tech to do all that... and that tech may very well already be on this forum for that very purpose. Airline or not, he would still be a member here right?

The feeling I get from some of the insecurity displayed here is that without s101, it becomes a lot harder to get into the sign industry, or that it may even be almost impossible to entertain the thought. For a little backyard shed operator, that may be true, but for an airline? please... that's just... like I said, amusing.

Reality is that any vendor is more than happy to teach customers how to use their equipment, tips and tricks and the such. Material suppliers like 3m and avery have courses on how to apply their material. Roland has the roland academy.

Youtube and Google, coupled with the ability to read a book, combined with some discipline, enables you to accomplish more than enough tasks to run a shop - with or without s101.

Has anyone here who objects to this airline joining, sent an email to google or youtube about your thoughts on people uploading videos on how to do your holy and sacred profession? Or maybe you've sent an email to google recently to express your concern about how too much sign making information comes up when you search for something, and that you really think it shouldn't.

I agree with Fred as well about a paid membership before even joining, however I do not believe that one should be allowed to continue their membership for longer than x period of time for free.

I'm a good example. I've been a member here for around 3 years (most of which I've been inactive), and have shared and exchanged a lot of information, yet I'm not a paid member. Why? Honestly, it's not the money. It's mainly because I'm not forced to be. I suggest a free period of a month or two, during which most people will find the answer to the problem which brought them here in the first place. Over the free month or two, they'd see that they would use this site again (if they're in a legit business and have an ongoing need for access to resources), and would gladly pay a membership fee.

Anyway, that's getting off track.

Ultimately, I think a large corporation with an in house sign dept, who already has access (via their equipment suppliers and media distributors) to a lot of the stuff some of us here are scared to share, probably has more to offer than we do.

 

[Raulrdz]

I voted NO! I'll keep it short and sweet. I have lost two customers (both local grills) that I made menu boards and graphics for. I gave them good prices and they both called for replacment graphics, later they cancelled saying that their beer supplier, who has an in-house sign shop, had agreed to print all their banners and graphics for free. How can I compete against that?

 

[Custom_Grafx]

How can I compete against that?

You can't, and restricting their access to resources on the internet won't help much either... as unfortunate as that may sound.

 

[ddarlak]

I compete against that?

seriously??? so the pubs you used to trade beers for signs now get free signs from somewhere else..... free signs usually look just like you'd imagine - crap. you didn't loose much.

-MOSH, they were 11 illegals anyway...

back to the topic

fred, why even ask the peanut gallery, this isn't democracy and you can predict that you would get lunacy outta just about any question posed here...

 

[Fred Weiss]

fred, why even ask the peanut gallery, this isn't democracy and you can predict that you would get lunacy outta just about any question posed here...

No Dave ... there's a certain logic and a certain predictability to it that helps me to clarify my thinking.

 

[iSign]

Most of this thread is amusing.

...Do you think anyone at Roland or HP would take the same attitude as some of the people here and say "nup, sorry, you're not a sign shop".?

...Without even joining s101, they will get better training than most of us here, more attention, grade A response time on problems and faults. They can call hp or roland and get a more qualified answer than most of us can provide...

not at all relevant, in my opinion... of course a sign equipment salesman won't see customers as competitors... quite simply, they aren't !

I voted "let Joe Airline" in, by the way... but to play devils advocate, and to identify the kind of information that I think most accurately represents the most value here...

...for me, anyway, I get quick responses, from actual hands on experience, in the most diverse scenarios...

...the HP techs etc... they can't offer that, they never even had that information... and no matter how many tens of thousands of dollars a company spends... most traditional sources of information are NOT 24/7, and are NOT schooled in the hands on realities of a million little random rare details...

...which the unmatchable collection of contributing members here DO possess

so, I'm not disputing that they are not really a threat to small sign shops... I get that & have voiced it long ago... but to find humor in a perceived oversight ... I doubt anyone overlooked the fact that HP wouldn't shun them... it's just irrelevant

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Warrior of Words, I approach you as a young and humble beginner, and I'm not being sarcastic - I respect a lot of the wisdom here and also accept we have more and more to learn as we go on.

Re-reading my post after rambling on, I agree, and not all of what I said was relevant, and my post also came across as making out s101 to not be as valuable as it really is. My apologies for that to everyone.

The point I was trying to make, was that no matter what s101 does about them wanting to become a member, that they will still open their in house department, and still learn how to do things. The point I felt some others were making, was that by not letting them in, they were going to somehow stop that in house department from coming into existence.