Editor’s Note: This marks Dale Salamacha’s inaugural Shop Ops column. Every other month, he’ll discuss his own best practices gleaned after more than 30 years of making signs.
Welcome everyone! This column will unfold a bit differently from my Vinyl Apps columns from the last several years. I plan to make it like a reality show for ST. My past columns have focused on the specific projects, and how beautifully they turned out. Now, I’m going to get into the deep details of how projects really went down.
We’re not going to sugarcoat anything; we’ll discuss shop issues, design struggles, tardy employees and some downright tragic missteps. All of you know that design/build projects rarely go off without a hitch. But, a lot of excitement surrounds these types of jobs, and I hope to share this with you.
We also welcome your input about topics you’d like to have featured in this column, or questions you’d like us to answer, from general operational inquiries to specific questions about materials or equipment. I’m not going to endorse one product versus another, but I’ll be happy to discuss how to optimize your productivity. You’re welcome to contact me at dale@media1signs.com.
How I got here
This marks my 32nd year in business. I started in my mother’s garage in Oviedo, FL, a town best known for growing celery, and being the hometown of Jacksonville Jaguars QB Blake Bortles. Coming into the sign industry in that era, I had the privilege of learning how to use a lettering quill and an airbrush. Vinyl, plotters and printers didn’t exist; my tools were a brush, 1Shot lettering enamels and a makeshift mahl stick with a rubber ball on the end. Well, those and the tackle box I used to carry them in; I sound ancient, don’t I?
Looking back, my early work was atrocious; I honestly don’t know how I convinced people to pay me to do it. But, with time and practice, my confidence and ability grew – and so did my list of customers. Once plotters and vinyl hit the market, I began hiring employees, cutting vinyl and forming channel letters with a jigsaw.
During the mid-‘90s, I bought my first large-format printer, a solvent-ink Mutoh – the first one purchased in the Southeast. And, in 1998, to help grow the business to support this investment, I took on partners Rick Ream and Damon Coppola. To create the perception that we’re a national company, we changed the name to Media1.
Fast forward to 2016, and Media1 – and our vehicle- and wall-graphics division, Wrap This! Ink – is a UL-licensed, 3M-certified shop that offers full design and fabrication capabilities. Now, we run HP 360 latex-ink printers. From permitting to installation, we handle every facet of signage production in-house.
The Mall at Millennia
Being a full-service shop, we encounter strange things almost daily. Our work at Orlando’s Mall at Millennia is a prime example. Orlando is recognized as a global tourism capital, and its shopping and retail backs this reputation. The Mall at Millennia is the city’s most upscale mall, with such tenants as Louis Vuitton, Tiffany’s, Ferragamo and many more.
Its property features four, 20 x 25-ft., double-sided entry monuments that direct traffic into the parking lots. They feature reverse-lit, neon channel letters with push-through, acrylic elements. These beautiful structures, however, weathered with age, and some of their neon went dark; metal-halide lamps burnt out, and its paint peeled.
Unfortunately, the signs sit atop large, marble bases integral to their frames, so removing the signs and tower to work on them in our shop was impossible. So, we presented an onsite work plan to the property’s owners: fabricated 10 x 17-ft. pan faces from 0.125-in.-thick aluminum with a “U”-channel perimeter to be secured directly over them. We’d paint them, and install internal LEDs to light them. Doing this would’ve required only painting the frames and signs in the field, which would save work and time.
But, mall management refused our proposal. They said their budget didn’t allow a complete changeover, and they wanted to preserve the current logo – they only agreed to refurbish existing elements.
We tested letter and logo components onsite, and brought them back to the shop to strip, prep and repaint them with interior reflective white, and the specific, exterior PMS blue shade. We fabricated new palm trees, crescent-shaped aluminum elements and an aluminum tower lamp. Concurrently, another crew was onsite sanding and prepping aluminum structures for painting. Next, we installed new sign elements and replaced the metal-halide lamps with double-sided Sylvania BoxLEDs to illuminate the crescents and palm trees.
However, out paint shop was so busy we couldn’t spare a crew to go offsite to paint the Mall at Millennia sign. After heavy research, we hired a commercial-painting company to handle the prep and painting. This freed up our team to repair other elements. The contractor offered to use an electrostatic-painting process, which we liked because it eliminates most overspray. With the monuments in close proximity to traffic, the client would appreciate this.
However, we had to work fast. This was November, and the job had to be completed in time for the mall’s annual Santa Claus visit before Christmas. The mall attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors for this event. So we had four weeks in which to work, and we had to be off the property by 10 a.m. every day when the mall opened. And, surely the contractor would understand not to spray before dew point at 7:30 every morning – right?
Well, not exactly.
They hadn’t yet left the jobsite when the mall management called to complain and demanded we come down. What we saw was horrific; the painters had sanded the monument with 80-grit, electric sanders, and had painted over the bodywork with no primer, and the paint had dried to a beige, cottage-cheese texture. The contractor offered no explanation and no solutions.
How did we deal with this potential disaster? Check back in April to find out!