Competition brings out the worst in many people. Owning a business is to put everything you have on the line in the hope of building something to provide for your family, it is hard days and long nights facing deadlines, avoiding mistakes, making clients happy, and keeping the banks off your back. Everyone else wants the same thing, and even in the expanding wide format market, competition is fierce and there is only so much work to go around. People do desperate things to stay above water – undercut each other, steal clients, badmouth other printers. Loyalty is a thing of the past, something people say with one side of their mouth trying to keep a client, while at the same time convincing another to abandon theirs with the other.
Not for Steve Lambourne, though. At SS Signs in Brisbane loyalty is a watchword and the foundation his business practice is built on. “A lot of people can’t comprehend that loyalty is everything,” he says. Lambourne knows a few things about loyalty, his parents Howard and Margaret have been in the sign industry for 43 years as owners of Brisbane sign company Skreenkraft. Steve began working for his parents when he was 15 and after 20 years decided it was time to make his own way and founded his company SS Signs in 2006. His parents offered him access to their clients but he declined and started from scratch, carving out a niche in vehicle wrapping, which with new technology was rapidly growing in popularity. As a specialised field, he was able to do wraps and sign installs as a subcontractor for the biggest sign companies in Australia.
Within eight months Lambourne had staff wrapping cars 70 hours a week, and it grew from there. “I’m loyal to the biggest sign companies in the country and that’s why they have no hesitation in giving me all the details of the companies they are doing the work for and trust that I will still leave them as the primary supplier,” he says. “We could go in and take that client, but why would you do that, it is their bread and butter.” Lambourne laments the number of start-up sign printers who are started by employees who immediately poach their old firm’s clients. He says it is both bad business and hurting the industry by driving down prices. “That’s the problem with the industry these days – all your staff think they can do it better and they will wander off,” he says. “They try to steal your customers because they think they have a right to their old firm’s clients, but they don’t because it’s not their client. Then they come back in 12 months because they collapse because they don’t know how to run a business.”
Lambourne expects loyalty from his clients too, and has little patience for those that immediately cut and run when presented with a cheaper deal. “All they are going to do to get your clients is undercut you by a dollar. Half the clients out there will take that dollar saving, but the other half have quite a bit of loyalty,” he says. “The ones who take the dollar always come back in 6-12 months because they aren’t treated as well, but I make it a bit difficult for them to come back. I like to have all the work, but I want loyal clients as well – it’s a two-way street.”
Instead of poaching clients by undercutting his competitors, Lambourne says he has grown SS Signs from nothing by consistently providing high quality products, meeting deadlines no matter what, and, of course, showing loyalty to both corporate and trade clients. He would rather let low-margin work go and focus on clients that appreciate value. “It all comes back to quality and reliability. People are willing to pay a higher price if they get a better result,” he says. “Everything in the signage industry is deadline, there is nothing that you get plenty of notice for, so you have to be able to deliver a high quality job quickly. We have been fortunate that a lot of contracts have come our way, but we have worked for them.
“We are picky about the work we take – we don’t adjust our prices, you don’t have to cut the guts out of prices to get business. If someone goes elsewhere because it was cheaper, I say I’ll see them in three months if it fails. It’s difficult to get to this position but we have got here through hard work and long hours.”
The key, Lambourne says, is to generate referrals, so as the business relies strongly on what its customers say it is essential make sure the work exceeds expectations. Having greatly expanded its range of products and services, SS Signs is now able to leverage its proficiency on one job to attract work for other products if the client is impressed. “The beauty of it is we don’t have to advertise, all the work comes in by word of mouth. It just flows through, we do a good job on one thing and we get work in another area,” he says. “We have a really good group of guys here now, everyone is self-sufficient, I don’t have to stand over anyone, I don’t have to worry about anyone, they just do their job. Eight hour days are rare and if we have a 15 hour day to work, they work it. Everyone just loves to come to work. I’ve always been busy, we have never not had anything to do and the more gear we get, the better we can do it.”
The strategy is paying off, with SS Signs now providing corporate signage, billboards, stickers, vehicle wraps, and light boxes to a range of corporate clients, event companies, government, and charities. It has also grown its trade business, with half its revenue coming from other sign companies that need specialist work done. Every week the company prints about 200-500m of signage or vinyl film and wraps between ten and 20 cars, and has taken on huge projects. Late last year it wrapped several train carriages and two locomotives with 800sqm of vinyl, in three days, for Queensland Rail in Maryborough. But the biggest investment is its mobile ‘skyboard’ billboard, which is hired out to events and for roadside advertising already printed and designed in house. It is the biggest mobile billboard in the world at a massive 320sqm, and takes only 20 minutes to raise using hydraulic lifts so it can be moved around daily if desired.
The company has also expanded into the digital realm with a truck-mounted LED digital billboard that Lambourne says is opening up additional revenue streams as well as feeding print work back into its core business. “It has really pushed us into a different area, we take it to events and people realise we are a signage company as well and they ask if we can do the signs for their advertising as well as wraps for the car fleets,” he says. The company is investing $1m into another seven 6 x 3m LED signs and has a big three-year contract coming up. Lambourne says the plan is to supply other sign companies with LED signs and become the Australia hub, both for supply and maintenance. The first stage is to connect with eight or ten sign companies on the east coast and expand from there.
Together with its in-house ad agency Outdoor Intelligence, Lambourne says his company has a turnover of about $5-6m and a profit margin of more than 30 per cent.
He says the enviable margin is achieved not only from offering high-quality products, but from doing as much in-house as possible. SS Signs has evolved to a full-service company offering design, printing, and installation all under one roof. This also means it is never held up by contractor delays, resulting in better flexibility and reliability.
Expanding the business into new areas and plans to collaborate with other companies has motivated SS Signs to put itself out there more than in the past. It often sponsors charity events like Ride for Life, and on the day ProPrint visited put partial wraps on 11 support cars for organiser Brisbane BMW in preparation for the event, along with banners, signage for the LED screens and stages, and promotional signage before the event. The donated work was worth more than $50,000 but Lambourne says it was worth every penny. “The benefit we get from giving, from publicity and the people we meet, far outweighs our expense, it’s unreal,” he says. Lambourne and three other staff also competed in the ASGA Wrap Masters National Challenge last year, coming second by only one minute and 22 seconds after easily winning the Queensland qualifier. “It was an ideal way to meet other wrap and sign companies around Australia and we got a lot out of it,” Lambourne says. “We got some business out of it, met potential clients, and started developing a network for our LED supply plans in other states. We also gained a healthy respect for other wrappers, meeting new people and sharing ideas. There is always someone better than you at something, so it is good to learn new tricks.”
The burgeoning business sees SS Signs moving into a bigger factory down the road in the south-east Brisbane suburb of Cleveland. Lambourne says the 680sqm site, 100sqm bigger than the old one, will give the company room to grow, a 10-15 per cent efficiency boost, purpose-built dedicated areas for its HP Latex 26500 and 28500 wide format printers and other operations, five metre high ceilings to fit trucks inside the wrapping bay that is three times bigger, and house a central control room for all the LED billboards it plans to deploy around Brisbane and hopefully one day the country.
The move was supposed to happen over Christmas but the company has been so overloaded with work that it has only just completed to move after working out of both sites for months. “It’s a beast you can’t stop,” Lambourne says of his business. Maybe you really can have too much of a good thing.
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