Sunshine Sign Company Inc.
Address: 121 Westboro Road, North Grafton, MA 01536
Phone: 508-839-5588
Fax: 508-839-9929
Website: www.sunshinesign.com
Number of Employees: 38
Top Executive: Dave Glispin, President and CEO
Product or Service: Commercial Signage
Year Founded: 1986
Service gets top billing at this sign company
Sunshine Sign Co. Inc. of North Grafton can create the most complex of architecturally designed signs from metal, aluminum, plastic or wood and meld them with sophisticated lighting schemes and special effects for the ultimate "wow factor." Its team of 38 might spend thousands of hours crafting a single custom sign for one client or replace dozens of signs over hundreds of miles of territory in a matter of days for another.
But the biggest specialty of this home-grown company isn’t the product of high technology, says founder, President and CEO David Glispin. It’s delivering superior service on "museum quality" signs in an industry that has been known to greet customer demands with a degree of arrogance.
"You need it Sunday; we’ll work Saturday night," is how Glispin sums up Sunshine Sign’s approach. "It’s blue lights every day. We never say no."
Not that Sunshine Sign doesn’t rely on technology in its operation, expected to bring in $5 million in revenue in 2006. The then tiny company embraced emerging graphics technology in the 1980s, as the industry was evolving from the hand-painted era. Result: It is now one of the largest sign companies in New England.
While most local sign companies remain several-person "cottage industries," Glispin says Sunshine Sign has the infrastructure, capabilities and reputation to bid on and win six-figure projects with regularity. It won a $600,000 contract to provide the signs for the new Worcester Superior Court House now under construction. It recently completed a five-week, $150,000 job erecting signs and lighting at Logan Airport’s Terminal A. Its signs grace the campuses of Worcester State College, WPI, Bentley College and the new Worcester Vocational School, as well as the corporate complexes of Biogen and Intel.
To keep pace with growing demand, Sunshine Sign will add another 4,000 square feet to its 10,000-square-foot manufacturing facility by year’s end.
Glispin and his partner Mark Herbert started the business as a side income in 1986 after he saw a roadside rental sign for sale in the want ads for $275. They found customers, including local fast-food restaurants, who were willing renters, and they built up their sign inventory to 70 before refocusing the company on sign fabrication and installation. The company was profitable in its first year, he says, and hit $1 million in revenue three years later based soley on Herbert’s salesmanship and service delivery.
While neither he nor his partner, Mark Hebert, vice president of sales, had any previous sign experience, they did have strong service backgrounds, which became the lynchpin of the company. Sunshine Sign’s computerized design and manufacturing facilities allow it to craft signature signs from exotic metals and woods and/or do assembly line work. While it handles architect controlled projects ranging from $20,000 to $800,000 in its corporate division, it still serves more modest clients in its small business division, handling jobs from $100 to $20,000, Glispin explains.
Glispin says the key to Sunshine Sign’s success is its employees. "We grew through always being able to get some of the best people in the industry," he says. It’s the interaction with their crew, which he says are like family, that is the most powerful reward for him.
Despite its rapid growth, Sunshine Sign remains in touch with its smaller-company fleetness. "We always have that nimble flexibility to handle smaller projects," says Glispin. And Glispin himself remains in touch with the entrepreneurial spirit that started it all. "I just try to create opportunities."
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