Growth and prosperity in the electric-sign industry continued at a relentless pace in 1997 as sign companies reported increasing profit margins, unprecedented sales per employee and an average sales-volume increase of 14%. These hard statistics suggest a 7% increase in the electric-sign industry’s overall sales volume ($4.6 billion) from last year’s $4.3 billion, and a doubling of industry size since this scientific survey debuted with fiscal 1983 statistics.
Here we’ve included some highlights from this year’s report. You can find the complete article in the July issue of Signs of the Times magazine, which can be purchased online.
Preview:
The great news continues as the average respondent to this survey enjoyed a 14% increase in sales volume from 1996 to 1997 (above). More than two-thirds (68.5%) celebrated greater sales, slightly better than the 64.1% who generated more revenue in 1996 versus 1995. The percentages of sign companies (13.9-18%) spread fairly evenly across the four sales-percentage-increase categories between 1-49%.
As has been customary the past few years, we also asked companies to predict their year-end sales volumes. The figures, above, indicate optimism, but shows the lowest rate since we began asking this crystal-ball question four years ago. In fact, it has decreased every year, from the 18.9% anticipated for 1995 to 17.1% (1996) to 15.6% (1997) to this year’s 12%. That first year, survey respondents actually underestimated the eventual average sales increases by 1%. Since then, however, projections have exceeded the ensuing results by 4% and 10%. Given this brief, three-year history, we can predict that the sales-volume increase for 1998 will range from 11-13%.