Behind every great sign company…

Winning the Craftsman Award for its hand-painted, neon-lit internal project for Penny Blacks and highly com-mended for Small Signmaker of the Year at the British Sign Awards, HNS Signs is making waves from its hub in Birmingham city. The phrase may not go ‘behind every great signage firm is a great woman’ but in this case Michelle Henry, founder and director of HNS Signs, is the driving force of the company.

Henry is a fourth generation sign writer and, aside from still owning her great grandfather’s sign-making hand-book from the 1880s, the craft and its traditions are very much in her blood. Practically trained from childhood, her grandparents—both sign-makers—used to get her making door signs for her friends’ bedrooms, seemingly destining her for a long-term career in the family trade.

Even an attempt at escaping into law did not last long, as Henry’s post university travels resulted in her working at a sign shop in Australia. It was fate, she says: “I then realised how much I missed it.”

On her return to the UK, an opportunity arose when the company she worked for went under in the recession in 2010. Henry says: “I was telling one of my customers in a children’s hospital that we wouldn’t be able to do their order. They convinced me that it would be a good idea to go buy up the assets and start up on my own, so I did.”

Starting solo

Some may balk at the idea of starting up a business alone in the midst of recession, but Henry has a determination that has brought her to where she is today. Positive to the nth degree, she talks about the benefits of starting a business in an economic slump, saying: “I think starting in the recession gave us a competitive edge to be honest, because all the bigger companies were really struggling, whereas I started up with fewer overheads.”

Reminiscing about her first 18 months working alone, Henry does however say it was not always easy: “I was really in the thick of it. It was different. When I started up it was in a friend’s shed. After about two or three weeks, I realised that it wasn’t going to work.” Low on funds, Henry moved in and shared a unit with screen printer, Genesis Display, which worked well for both companies as they battled the recession.

One thing that really gave the business a boost, she continues, was achieving a governmental enterprise grant. This allowed Henry to expand, adding to her arsenal of a Summa cutter, Mercury laser pro, and a student accountant, Henry could afford to take on an apprentice to train, and three full-time members of staff. Henry then moved to improve all the efficiencies she could as HNS experienced a fast rate of growth, making sure it was in the perfect position as the sign industry got back on its feet.

Traditional trends

Henry has particularly noticed a renaissance in traditional sign-writing, which is good news for HNS and may explain why the company’s turnover has doubled month-on-month since last June. She says: “Traditional sign-writing is getting more popular and we’re getting more demand for it. A lot of it is to do with conservation trusts insisting that signs be traditional. We did a roll out project for Wine Rack and Bargain Booze, and one of them is in a heritage area. If we hadn’t offered traditional sign-writing then it wouldn’t have been able to have a sign at all. We’ve done quite a few heritage pro-jects around Birmingham. But on top of that it’s just becoming very on-vogue and trendy to have hand-painted signage.”


Aside from that, Henry is very passionate about the traditional skills, and ensures her staff are all able to work with or without supporting machinery. She explains: “It would be a shame to let it die. It is a real trade. Without sounding flippant, anyone can use a digital printer. It doesn’t require that much real skill. You just set it up and then press print. It has taken away from the trade by not keeping up these traditions.”



The potential ban of neon signage, a hot topic in the industry right now, is also something Henry would lament, as it is also one of HNS’s particular specialties. She says: “Again, it’s a traditional skill. And it doesn’t matter how good these new products are there is no substitution. I can understand why the government is unhappy with it but really I think we need to find another way.”

For Henry, sign-making is clearly not just a career, and she has her sights set on the industry as a whole and its place within the UK. Reflecting this is the company’s work with local charities, including the Birmingham Children’s Hospital, which supported her going solo originally. Though a small company, HNS still manages to regularly raise funds for different wards in the hospital, donating signs and even staging black-tie events.



Henry also understands that skills are as valuable as money, as she explains: “We also work with the Timkin centre in Wolverhampton which has been set up for young adults who have left school with no education and can’t even get onto an apprenticeship. We have them come to the firm and learn traditional sign-writing.

“We then work with the council to let them go into the tower blocks in their community and decorate them using sign-writing. The first one is due to be done in March. It gives these youngsters the confidence to learn something that other people cannot do when they’ve always been told they can’t.”

A man’s world?

It is not off the mark to say that there are few female owners and managing directors of sign-making businesses in the UK, occasionally leading to accusations of discrimination or sexism in the industry. Henry comments: “You don’t see a lot of women in the industry as a whole. I think it kind of worked in my favour actually. A lot of men thought it was a bit of a novelty, having a woman coming out on site and using a power drill.


“Some people call the signage industry sexist. But I’ve never really experienced that, I’ve never had any problems. Once a guy, however, when he saw me putting vinyls into the back of his car, couldn’t believe that I’d done it and made his wife watch me, saying ‘Look! She did it!’ And he gave me a £20 tip because he was so impressed, not even realising that it was my own company.

“The only place I’ve ever experienced any kind of sexism was in Australia. The owner of the company that I worked for didn’t think I should go out and do any vehicle graphics because I was a female. I was allowed to stay in the design shop and weed vinyl or send things to print, but I wasn’t allowed to do anything other than that. It’s more overt over there.”



Despite this, Henry puts a lot of her success down to her experience in an Australian firm. Henry explains, saying: “It’s basically what I built the whole ethos of this company around. UK sign-making businesses—including my grandparents’—tend to be very departmentalised. So one person does vinyl graphics, someone else just does engraving, and another just does fabrication, and it stays like that.

“In Australia they don’t do that. You learn everything. Apprenticeships are much more intense, it’s a four year course, but they learn everything. When they are given a job they can do the whole lot.



“When I came over here, being a small business, I figured that’s the way it had to be. When I started taking staff on it was important to me that they did everything. Firstly, because it stops them getting bored, and secondly they are multi-skilled and if someone’s ill, it doesn’t affect the way the business is run.”

Henry has big plans for HNS, starting with returning to Australia to open a second firm, via some American retail projects who have noticed the unique style HNS brings to its design and craft. For now though, she is taking a directorial seat as her newly qualified apprentice, Macaulay—who was recently congratulated on Twitter by Top Gear’s James Mae for his wrapping skills—and other sign-writers take the wheel.

The future lies for HNS, says Henry, somewhere, ‘hopefully international—preferably hot!’ and as the winter chill shows no signs of retreat, many sign-makers would surely love to follow suit.

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