New Year’s resolutions are a special moment; a blank sheet is laid before us, giving an opportunity for all the angst over set backs in personal and business life to be laid to rest.

Onto this blank sheet start to go new ideas for another year of hard graft, and before too long an itch begins to get back to your company and start, with a fresh sense of enthusiasm, getting it on the right track and towards easy street.

But considering the flat-lined UK economy, troubles in European markets, angst over bank lending, and continued problems with the retail sector—and hence sign buyers—achieving these ambitions could be no mean feat.

This said, I truly am positive about the prospects for the sign industry in 2012. Never before has there been so much free information available to companies in our community, offering advice and information on every conceivable sector.

This takes the form not only of trade magazine such as SignLink, but also a host of new online platforms that can be used to research and make educated decisions with concrete business intelligence before making any investment, branching out to offer a new service, or simply improving your current operations efficiency. One of these is www.signlinktv.com, which I am very happy to see is seeing intense use by the industry to share videos from how to maintain wide-format printers through to creating gold leaf sign lettering.

We have also listened to your feedback from 2011 and so have introduced three brand new sections to help give you more resources to grow your business; Sign Doctor—exploring how to avoid the common causes of sign failure; Business Oracle—giving your advice from the experts on how to boost your revenue; and Get Ahead Online—covering how to optimise your web offering and start selling online.

I look forward to all your valued contributions to come, and hope your ride through 2012 is a smooth one.