COMPANY HISTORY
Rapid
Signs started small as a quick vinyl sign shop in 1991. Shortly thereafter we
began screen printing T-Shirts, Signs, Cups, almost anything that
would lay still. As time progressed, we found our niche in printing on flat
corrugated substrates, and determined that specialization was the most
efficient way to produce and sell our product. In 1995, we sold all of the
textile presses and totally dedicated the business to screen printing yard
signs on corrugated plastic. We have printed nothing but corrugated plastic
yard signs and some flat metal stock since, and our growth has been phenomenal.
FACILITIES HISTORY
The
company started in a corner of an industrial tool supply store as a quick sign
shop. After a couple of successful years, we moved to a 2500 sq foot building
next to the owner's home in Decatur, Alabama. At this time, we printed using
evaporative inks, one small automatic press, and used a primitive manual press
for large format printing. With our amazing growth came the need for better
technology and In 1996, we decided to convert to UV cured ink and thus had to
increase that building's size to 5,000 square feet to accomadate the new UV
drying unit and another larger automatic press. We also developed our own
high-speed press for printing large format political signs. Around 1998, our
Internet business took off and sales began to increase exponentially. This
forced us to temporarily rent a larger building inside the city of Decatur. Our
plans are always to keep fixed costs to a minimum, so the idea to build our own
full scale custom built facility began soon thereafter. In 2001 we completed
the first 10,000 square foot phase of our current manufacturing facility in
Athens Alabama. We have since doubled our building size to 20,000 square feet
plus office space. We have a very large printing capacity, and are ever
expanding this capacity to meet production needs.
CURRENT STATE OF THE COMPANY
We
currently occupy a 26,000 square foot manufacturing facility with four
Ultraviolet curing units and eight automatic printing presses. During the peak
season, we employ two full production shifts. We have become one of the largest
corrugated yard sign printers in the country. Our rapid growth can be
attributed primarily to our presence on the Internet and our extensive network
of dealers and resellers. Furthermore, many of our dealers maintain web sites
that have lead to thousands of orders over the past several years. Due to
developing such a great sign dealer network, we have recently converted to a
totally wholesale operation. Our yard sign dealers do not have to compete with
our prices.
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