All work and no play...

It is a rare person that enjoys their job 100 percent of the time. For most of us, work has its ups and downs, and those who claim otherwise are probably lying. All careers comes with their own challenges, and all industries have specific bug-bears, little niggling issues that you cannot truly appreciate unless you are directly involved.

And the sign industry is no exception. As you walk through the hall at Sign and Digital UK, or sit in the Wetherspoons after it, you will undoubtedly here similar complaints being raised and stories being shared. After all, they do say a problem shared is a problem halved; so with that in mind, I have been talking to various members of the industry, trying to uncover the unique issues that face sign-makers today.

Battling the elements

Without a doubt, the conditions you work in are largely going to determine the problems you face at work: a zoo keeper is going to face wildly different challenges to a dentist. For most sign-makers, a large percentage of their time is going to be spent outdoors or in chilly warehouses or workshops; whether it is installing shop-front signs or wrapping a car, this job can be far more pleasant in the summer.

As we approach the final few weeks of winter, this is an issue at the top of many peoples’ minds. Zoe Berisford from Exeter is the owner of Exe Signs, a young but growing company, and applying vehicle graphics on cold day is top of her list of bug-bears. Anybody who has scraped the frost of a car windshield first thing in the morning will be able to relate to this; whilst working with (hopefully) warmer materials, the time alone that your hands are exposed to the elements certainly make vehicle wrapping a fair-weather task. Yet storms are there to be weathered in any profession, and Berisford has not let this aversion to the cold dampen her enthusiasm, wrapping anything from vans to horseboxes.




















Being a woman in a traditionally male game, Berisford does admit that some of the physical aspects of the job would also rate highly on her list of dislikes. Again, however, she has not let this hold her back and offers a wide range of signage options, having recently supplied Exeter Chiefs rugby ground, Sandy Park, with all its internal and external signs. Indeed business is booming for small company, which doubled its profit from last year and now employs a second member of staff every Friday, as well as investing in a second vehicle to cope with the increased demand.


   

Picky purchasers

Berisford highlights her customer base as one of the highpoints of the job, having got to know them well over the past two years. Every now and then, however, they do feature on her bug-bear list, with a complaint I am sure will be familiar to many in the industry: those customers who ask for a sign without actually knowing what they want.



This issue certainly rang true with the firms I spoke to; David Allen from Allen Signs captioned a typically frustrating conversation with a customer: “In the first instance a customer will say, ‘I'll leave it to you do come up with an idea’, only to then repeatedly tell you: ‘I'm not keen on that’. And when you then ask for their ideas, they will say: ‘I don’t know, you’ll think of something.’”


This type of exchange seems to be an infuriatingly common experience in the sign industry. Indeed, Jeff Taylor from Taylor Made Signs in Cardiff chose it as his number one complaint. He appeals to all customers to provide, “precise artwork and a precise decision”, pointing to one section of his customer base in particular that are guilty of not always sticking to their original choice.

“It’s the ladies”, he comments. Adding: “They rarely have the correct artwork and nearly always change their minds. I say this with no malice, but it is the truth. On a number of occasions we have actually made a loss on a job, after having to change the design a number of times because the customer has changed her mind.
 
“As I say, I don’t wish to be offensive, but this is truly my biggest bug-bear in this job.”

Time is of the essence

Like many professions, a sign-maker’s life is dictated by deadlines. If a customer gives you a date by which they need the work done and you do not deliver, not only is the payment in jeopardy but your reputation is put at risk. But what happens when it is the customers themselves that prevent you meeting the deadline? According to many of the companies I spoke to, this is an all too common occurrence in the sign industry.

David Allen explains: “We are sometimes sent a file on the day of the deadline, only to find that the fonts haven’t been converted to curves. It can be sent so late that we are unable to get hold of anyone, as they’ve already gone home, and yet they need the job first thing in the morning.”

This places the sign-maker in an impossible position, and it is dependent on the temperament of the customer as to whether they will be reasonable and understand this. Allen continues to say that sometimes the opposite situation is the case, when you are successfully working to a deadline and arrive at the site only for the customer to say: “we’re not ready for you; can you come back tomorrow?” Both occasions are equally infuriating, and, apparently, equally common problems. Allen continues to describe an issue that the designers here at SignLink magazine can certainly relate to: being sent a ‘print-ready’ file that is an image from a website about the size of a thumbnail, which needs to be printed at a metre high.

Exe Sign’s Berisford also picks up on the issue of deadlines, but describes the frustrating issue of suppliers not being able to react as quickly as her company can, meaning she has to delay producing a sign and risk losing the customer.

Bureaucratic nightmares

Another major bug-bear that is certainly not unique to the sign industry, but which has repeatedly come up in the research for this feature, is the everlasting irritation of paperwork and bureaucracy. Simon Dorke, a director at Hammonds Graphics and Signs, selects the filling out of method statements (documents that detail the way a work task or process is to be completed) as a particularly thankless and frustrating procedure, along with the risk assessments required by law, but which, as he terms it, are really just, “cop-outs for the insurance industry.”



Last but certainly not least, however, is probably the most serious and commonly mentioned issue: late payment. David Allen, among many others, highlights this major problem as absolutley number one on his list of
bug-bears.



And he certainly is not alone. Indeed, in the Forum of Private Business’s 2014 banking and finance survey, 23 percent of members reported an increase in late payment over the previous year, compared with just 3 percent who reported a decrease. Some 29 percent also saw an increase in the average number of days beyond the deadline that a payment is made late.

Phil Orford of the Forum of Private Business commented: “Upwards of £30bn remains tied up in late payments, costing a typical small business 130 hours a year to chase and meaning that a third are forced to seek external finance to cover the gaps in cash.”


David Allen explains how he experiences the industry-wide issue: “You get some customers that just hang onto payments. Then they will suddenly find a reason for why they haven’t paid yet, but which they had never mentioned before, and try to make you believe the issue isn’t that bad.”

But of course it is bad, and as Orford from the Forum explains, can cause real problems for small businesses.

Every cloud

While the topic of this feature does not leave a great deal of room for positivity, I am eager not to finish on an entirely negative note. In fact, gathering comments for inclusion in this article has proved one of the most difficult assignments I have had from SignLink to date. The usually very-accommodating sign industry found it difficult to come up with complaints, with most companies far more eager to fill me in on the successful years they have had so far.

O Factoid: According to a 2013 report by Gallup polling organisation, there are twice as many ‘actively disengaged’ workers in the world as there are ‘engaged’ workers who love their jobs O

Indeed, not wishing to tempt fate, I predict the amount of success stories that emanate from Sign and Digital UK will far outweigh any negative press, as the industry capitalises on the steadily growing economy.

Be that as it may, it is important to get things off your chest every now and then, and there isn’t any harm in the occasional moan.

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