While the commercial printing segment in the United States continues to struggle, still losing an average of 800 establishments annually, the sign and display graphics business is a growth segment. In fact, many commercial printers and most of the print franchise organizations are looking to signs and display graphics to drive revenue growth. Meanwhile, the four franchisors operating in the sign and display graphics industry (Alliance Franchise Brands, FASTSIGNS, Signarama, and SpeedPro), along with the non-franchise Sign Biz network, are all reporting growth and do not seem at all daunted by competition from the printing segment. As AJ Titus, President of Signarama, stated, speaking of potential competition from printing companies, “That doesn’t bother us. I don’t think we are at a disadvantage at all. Someone who buys a large-format printer and says, ‘I am a sign company now,’ is very mistaken. We’ve invested in a great deal of infrastructure and support for our franchisees, are a mature brand, and even a new center would be years ahead of an inexperienced start-up.” This is a sentiment that was echoed by all of the sign professionals we interviewed for this article.

In this 2019 Sign and Display Graphics Franchise Review, we take a look at the sign and display graphics industry as a whole and recap our conversations with franchisors in terms of their current infrastructure, strategies for the future, and, of course, their year-over-year performance. Because Sign Biz has 224 affiliated centers, we are including them in this review as well, even though they are not a franchise organization.

The U.S. Census Bureau actually has two different classifications for signs and display graphics, and businesses self-define in their reporting. Therefore, for purposes of this article, we have considered both: