ImageFirst News

January 2021

Wholesale Signage Manufacturing: Review. Strategy. Trends.

2020 was a year. Dave Watts shares his review along with strategy and trends for 2021.

The past year of 2020, while dis­rup­tive and chal­leng­ing on numer­ous fronts, was pro­duc­tive and excit­ing for ImageFIRST™! Rev­enue was sta­ble and steady with new sales book­ings being very pos­i­tive giv­en the Q2 macro-eco­nom­ic dip. Great clients, cre­ative sig­nage projects, orga­ni­za­tion­al grit, ver­sa­til­i­ty and per­se­ver­ance paved our way for­ward together.

Stable and Steady Signage: 2020 Year in Review


Our team pro­vid­ed sig­nage solu­tions for numer­ous high-pro­file and notable new con­struc­tion and rebrand­ing projects across the Unit­ed States. Eight of our reseller cus­tomers spent over $100,000 with 2 of those in excess of $300,000. While we were not immune to the impact of Covid-19, all full-time employ­ees remain in good health and we proac­tive­ly man­aged tem­po­rary sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions and met your demand in 2021.

There is no doubt the econ­o­my is chang­ing right before our eyes along with our sign and graph­ics indus­try. We plan to stay con­sis­tent with our core val­ues (cre­ative, col­lab­o­ra­tive, loy­al and hon­est). Our goal and objec­tive includes main­tain­ing mar­ket­place emo­tion­al intel­li­gence and con­tin­u­ous­ly adapt­ing to that growth and change. You, our clients of our vast prod­ucts and ser­vices, con­tin­ue to evolve and this chal­lenge dri­ves our focus every day.

4 Organizational Strategies for Wholesale Signage in 2021


Peo­ple first – machines and process­es learn but peo­ple lead. Our indus­try is loaded with the best tech­nol­o­gy, equip­ment and prod­ucts pos­si­ble but it’s tak­ing care of our cus­tomers and our employ­ees that give us a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage to excel.

Inno­vate! Now more than ever we must inno­vate or die. We can­not let the fear of the unknown stop us from inno­vat­ing our process­es, prod­ucts, tal­ent and opportunities!

Smart spend­ing - spend our cap­i­tal on long-term bold moves to adapt and grow strate­gi­cal­ly and regionally.

Hon­esty – Stick­ing to our core val­ues, we must be hon­est with our­selves, cus­tomers, and stake­hold­ers while plan­ning and prepar­ing to per­form for our customers.

Forecasting Sign Industry Trends


We see enhanced devel­op­ment and usage of LED light­ing, 3D and dig­i­tal print­ing tech­nol­o­gy, and bright prospects for design-build solu­tions that make the process eas­i­er for our clients. In addi­tion, we feel that soft­ware and AI will devel­op tools that con­tin­ue to push our prod­ucts, equip­ment and ser­vice abil­i­ty to high­er levels. 

We also see future growth and spend­ing on infra­struc­ture-relat­ed con­struc­tion and ren­o­va­tion projects specif­i­cal­ly in 22 and 23. New cap­i­tal projects should stay strong in health­care, res­i­den­tial con­struc­tion, and senior liv­ing mar­kets. While a 9-to-12-month eco­nom­ic hang­over may loom in cer­tain indus­tries, we see a like­ly increase in rebrand­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in late 22 and 23 due to pent up demand in the sec­tor. This will present growth poten­tial for reli­able sign resellers and their net­work of trust­ed whole­sale man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ners. Our focus and strat­e­gy is to be vis­i­bly present and ready to take advan­tage of those future oppor­tu­ni­ties with our sig­nage reseller partners.

Have a ques­tion or want to talk more? Shoot us an email!