The Sign Guy: Operating A Sign Business Franchise

Franchising.com:

When Lino DeFeo bought a Sign-A-Rama franchise in West Palm Beach, Fla., he didn’t know much about signs.

That was about 15 years ago. DeFeo had sold his trucking business in Manhattan and moved to Florida with his wife Maria and their 2 young children to join a family business. But that didn’t work out exactly as planned. ‘I got out before we totally killed each other,’ he says with a laugh.

DeFeo spent the better part of a year exploring business opportunities and attending trade shows before spotting an ad for a sign company. He said to wife, ‘I’ve looked at everything else, why not a sign company?’ They bought it.

‘When I got into the business, I knew absolutely nothing about signs, fonts, marketing, advertising - I never even had my hands on a keyboard in my entire life,’ he says. And this in a business, even then, that was computer-driven.

They attended Sign-A-Rama training together, which went a long way toward allaying his fears about entering a completely new field. “I didn’t know a keyboard from a hole in the wall - or design or fonts. They taught us the basics of that,’ he says.

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