If you have been in business for more than 48 years, seen your company grow from one sign-writer to two regional hubs, achieved sustained annual growth through the worst recession since the 1930s, and increased your turnover to over £500,000, you must be do something right.

Based in the Cathedral city of Lincoln, Allen Signs is often in the trade magazine headlines and has made a name for itself by producing work that is not just of high-quality, but is produced by a team that seems to look at customers as an extended business family, rather than a revenue stream.

“My father [Barry] started out on his own as a sign-writer and commercial vehicle painter in 1965. After five years he had saved enough capital and invested in an automated pantograph machine for cutting out and engraving perspex letters. He got ahead of the trend and expanded the business into doing a lot more sign lettering work,” remembers managing director, David Allen.

He continues: “I joined the business in 1984, and only the previous year had we ended our commercial vehicle painting service and started doing vehicle livery using vinyl. My father then concentrated the businesses resources on expanding into doing signage fabrication, something we continue to build on today.”

Now with one member of staff that still retains the old sign-writing skills, Allen explains that it is a badge of honour for the company that when someone asks if they can create a gold-leaf traditional honours board or hand-painted, they can say yes.

Something that clearly stands out about Allen Signs is that it is has all the best qualities of being a family-run company, while at the same time a business model that sees it build each area of the company sustainably and in reaction to long-term developing trends in sign buying. Instead of knee jerk reactions to change, it has based its investment decisions on well-founded research and comprehensive feedback from its supply partners and key customers.

Hare and the tortoise

“When I started at the company we had a Gerber Graphics 3 for a year, which would only cut 300mm,” explains Allen, who adds: “This was the world’s first user-friendly automated vinyl letter cutter and my father bought one very soon after it was launched. We then bought a second one shortly after as demand increased due to the lower prices and higher volumes we could offer. If a customer had a specific logo to produce or we didn’t have the specific font that was needed, we were still projecting it onto the wall, drawing it by hand and then carboning that onto vinyl, which was cut by hand.”

Although having been in at the ground floor of developing the current business models and technology that most sign companies use today, Allen Signs has avoided rash investments in new kit and diversification for its own sake. Instead it has identified where there is stable and growing demand for a product or service, and waited for the technology that supports it to be ready, in terms of quality and productivity, before investing. This approach has seen the company, ‘put a bit on its turnover’ each year according to Allen, and seen it survive and prosper where many have raced ahead on shaky foundations and gone bust.

“Today we use two 1.2m wide plotters, and instead of doing one off projects, we are set up to do fleets of vehicles or very extensive multiple-sign projects. We have also extended our reach to well beyond our historic regional boundaries,” adds Allen.

Indeed, the company recently announced its biggest ever expansion project, seeing it establish an office in Nottingham’s creative district. Although a big step-up for the nine-strong company, the move links into its wider ethos. Allen explains that the miles commuting between its Lincoln-base and Nottingham were clocking up and that demand from the neighbouring city was such that it made financial sense to create a physical presence in the area.

Allen continues: “ We have seen demand from the area steadily increasing, and we made the decision that it would be very much to our advantage to expand. We have a slightly different approach in the Nottingham office, in that we are taking a more consultative approach and working in partnership on larger signage projects. This makes us an East-Midlands based business now, rather than a Lincoln-based one. This came about because a large client we had worked for owned the office space we are now in, and as some new space was becoming available, everything seemed to line up.”

Founding values

“It may sound a bit daft, but we really look to work with our customers instead of just filling out a brief. We get a lot of customers that don’t have a clear idea of what they want, even on very broad strokes like what they want the sign made from. So our approach is to work in partnership with them rather than just being a supplier,” explains Allen.

Looking at its client base, Allen explains that many of its best customers came as a result of referral from designers, agencies, or partner companies: “It is not often that a client knows exactly what they want, so we give them a service that takes the pressure of them, fully manages the project, and helps them to achieve their goals.

“There is nothing worse than going into a sign shop and asking, ‘can you help me?’, just to get, ‘decide what you want and then we will make it for you’. We will ask them questions about what they want to ultimately achieve with the signage and perhaps what problems they are trying to overcome. We will then go through a design process to make sure they are happy before we start work.”

Gimme that old time religion

This focus on customer service and ‘going above and beyond’ is an approach that may mean less jobs can be completed, but in turn it creates far more clients and loyalty in the long-term through building a solid reputation.

“There is far more value in providing that little bit more than just the sign from supplied artwork. It is those foundations that mean we are one of the first places people in our region think of, and as we look after yet another client it snowballs exponentially and is part of the reason we have been able to expand to new offices. Our goal is to make the customer feel we want to deal with them, rather than have to,” says Allen.

Shouting loud

Often seen appearing in both the trade media and regional press, Allen long ago saw the value of building the company’s reputation by simply telling the UK what it does, and how well it does it.
Circumspect about the initial dot.com bubble, Allen waited until the internet had become an accepted method of sourcing services before venturing onto the web in a big way. Once demand was clear, the company employed a professional consultancy to, not only design allen-signs.co.uk, but send it to near the top of the Google rankings.

“We have not needed internet-sourced customers, as I have continued my fathers approach by looking after people, who not only come back but make sure others do to. That said, when we launched our new website that was search engine optimised and user-friendly, two hours later we had a very sizeable job from it,” explains Allen.

Rather than create an e-commerce solution for the sake of it, the website acts as an elegant end-to-end company showcase and contact portal. Although creating a platform where customers could buy its products was an option, Allen advises that this needs very extensive resources. Indeed, it would require extra staffing and logistics capabilities to be done well, and is not worth endangering such a solid reputation just to be able to say, ‘me too’.

However, Allen highlights this as another possible area of future expansion: “We spoke to experts at Google Analytics when our website was designed to get it right and put a lot of effort into this area. We could do a lot more, as from the small amount we have done you can see some real scope.”

The key advantage that Allen identifies of having a solid internet presence that is at the right scale for the physical business, is that it has no geographic or perceptual boundaries. Two key examples are wrapping eleven phone boxes for BT’s Artbox project, on which a host of big-name international artists and designers collaborated, and wrapping a series of customised promotional washing machines for technology giant LG.

Core philosophies

Asking Allen what is next for the company and how it is going to evolve its business model, his answer his characteristic of the unassuming but talented businessman: “Rather than jump on every new trend, our model has grown to use best-in-class trade suppliers when we get asked for work we can’t do as well in-house, like large monoliths and complex LED illuminated sign letters.

“You can’t restrict yourself to just what can be produced in our four walls. We now manage a network of trade partners that we have developed strong relationships with, which allows us to go out and take on bigger and more complex projects.

“My father started the company and saw it through some tough times by sticking to the philosophy that we might not be the biggest, or the cheapest, but we are the best at what we do.”