“My vision is a company committed to innovative technology, service excellence, rigorous quality control, and a culture of continuous improvement where our total workforce is passionate about exceeding customer expectations,” enthuses Driver.

Trade Signs has reportedly experienced one of its best ever trading years, seeing it hire six new members of staff and launch a number of brand new sign technologies.
Driver explains his journey to the top of one of the sign industry’s biggest trade-only suppliers: “Having been a very passionate young artist in my early teen’s, In 1987 I spent a requested a week doing my work experience at Art Signs in Hertfordshire, from that experience my employer requested my labour so I worked there every Thursday night and Saturday.”

Driver continues: “There I worked on traditional pub signs and I was classically trained in carpentry, spray painting, hand painting and gold leafing; but it is not there that my passion for art started, that came from my mum, she is an artist herself and helped teach me from a young age how to draw and paint. During 1989 to 1992 I immigrated to Sydney, Australia where I worked for a sign company in Brookevale, north of Sydney and this is where I decided to work for myself, at that time I started contacting shops and local business and completed a wide variety of work.

“On my return in 1992 to the UK I completed an HND in Graphic Design, as I felt I needed to up my design skills before starting my own company and that’s when technology entered the industry’s main stream and vinyl cutting started to take place and replace a lot of the skills I had spent years learning.”

Growing from 4 to 45 staff over its history, Trade Signs was born in 1994 as the cut vinyl graphics market took off and saw a niche open up for dedicated trade suppliers in this area. Some four years later Trade Signs opened up its sign fabrication wing, with the Millennium then seeing it invest in CNC routing technology followed up by continuous staff and equipment expansion. The culmination of this effort was in 2012 when the company moved to a 33,000sq ft premises in Tring. This was combined with a significant capital investment into new lasers and sheet metal fabricators, while 2015 see the launch of a new wet spray and powder coating facility.

“All of our staff have a fantastic vision and passion for our company, and that shows in what we have achieved to date,” concludes Haylee Benton, operations manager for Trade Signs.
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