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Here is part of an old ad sent to me by a friend - interesting to me is that the stuff is being offered by "Union Signs" of New York - obviously marketing non-union folks to come paint signs. And only the men, at that.
[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: Mike Languein ]
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Same tatctic used by Gerber Scientific when they advertised the 4B's in magazines to industries other than sign folks! They said in their ad's that you can do it all yourself and not pay the sign painter.
-------------------- The SignShop Mendocino, California
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. — Charles Mingus Posts: 6805 | From: Mendocino, CA. USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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Sounds remarkably familiar to the sales pitch of the folks selling sign-a-rama and such franchise operations, especially the part about "no experience necessary." Goes to show there's nothing new about it.
-------------------- "A wise man concerns himself with the truth, not with what people believe." - Aristotle
Cam Bortz Finest Kind Signs Pondside Iron works 256 S. Broad St. Pawcatuck, Ct. 06379 "Award winning Signs since 1988" Posts: 3051 | From: Pawcatuck,Connecticut USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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In Upton Sinclair's book, "The Jungle", which was written around 1904 he talks about the real estate sales pitch "Own cheaper than rent" - same old same old - they never change. Well, I guess you can't argue with success.
Posts: 1859 | From: / | Registered: Nov 1998
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Bob, they used to do a LOT of gold work and glue chipped signs when Leonard Russo was the supervisor in the sign shop - he was there when I worked there the first time 14 years ago and he worked a lot with Rick Glawson. Things change, though, and Leonard is gone and so is most of the fun stuff. The powers that be brought in a tough retired army general to whip the place into shape a few years back and his military tactics caused many people to leave. For several years they had a tough time getting talent to work there as they also cut way back on wages. Our job is to fix the mistakes. The gold work you see now on Main Street has been done (and redone) mostly by Glenn Duncan and Jeff Croteau. If you get to Calif Adventure go to the "Hollywood Backlot" and you'll see both sides of the street were done by John Studden. You have to look close to see amazing attention to detail. John doesn't work for Disney - as with most of the pictorial work around there they contract for new work with outside vendors. Last year they hired a big bunch of people, myself included, and some of those pictorial artists now do work there. They continue to blow me away with their talent. No, the ONE good thing about that job is the $$$. Everything else sucks, but they pay real well. They have a habit of taking the lowest bid on new sign work from outside vendors and then we have to redo it to make it good, so they had to up the ante to get some real sign painters to work for them. Everything in the Cal Adventure is supposed to be 'Modern California' so they had a lot of the signage done in vinyl and digital print. Well, it's a year old, now and failing miserably; peeling, fading, bubbling up - so a little at a time it's being replaced with painted signs so it will last. Ha! Take THAT, vinyl jockeys! My big gripe here is that we have to use water base house paint to try and letter with. It doesn't cover, doesn't last and fades rapidly. It's like trying to paint with mud. Thin mud. The only way it stays on is they coat everything with clear Imron and get about 2 years out of it. If we could only get them to let us use One Shot I think the work would be a lot better, but they're afraid of the lead content they think is in O.S. -- so they use Imron, which is probably killing us all. Go figure.
O.K., I'm done venting. *whew* With all of that it's a fun place to visit - I did that myself a couple weeks ago. Did you get a load of that Christmas Tree on Main Street? 65 feet tall and made out of 3 trees! Hope you had a good time...
I'm with Cam on the sales pitch thing. I was thinking it sounded like a pitch for the amway pyramid scheme. There aren't any amway representatives here, are there?
-------------------- Chris Welker Wildfire Signs Indiana, Pa
Posts: 4254 | From: Indiana, PA | Registered: Mar 2001
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