thority (DCTA) every morning, it gave
me the courage to ‘get in the game,’”
said Stephanie Spies-Cunningham
and Todd Cunningham, Signarama
Lewisville, Texas. “Having multiple national
accounts, repeat business, and
government entities would help grow
our business and get our name out in
the local community.”
For SpeedPro Imaging of Denver, it
was a more deliberate vertical that
they targeted. “We got involved in this
vertical by design. I wanted to focus
the studio on larger jobs,” said Darin
Schneider, owner of SpeedPro Imaging
of Denver. “Our fi rst big client (Comcast)
was landed from a cold call to the
Mountain Region Fleet manager.”
And Circle Graphics took a third
approach. Th e company had been
incredibly successful carving out
a dominant niche in grand format
billboard graphics, but when it decided
it was time to expand, said Andrew
Cousin, CEO, Circle Graphics, “the next
obvious place was the non-billboard
out-of-home market, which is transit.”
And as diff erent as the three approaches
to getting involved in the
transit market are, the shops are just
as diff erent in how they do the work,
illustrating the depth of opportunities
the vertical can off er.
Circle Graphics, for example, decided
to focus on their current customers,
since, as Cousin noted, many times the
same clients buying billboard graphics
are also the buyers for various transit
applications. He noted that, “We have
three types of customers: the media
owners themselves — billboard companies
or folks that own or control the
media assets like buses, shelters, street
furniture, stations, etc.; the media buying
advertising agencies, who also provide
print production for their clients;
and fi nally the large advertisers who
do their own media buying in house
and purchase their print production
directly.”
Cousin said that for the most part,
Circle Graphics is just focusing on
the print production — the creative
comes almost exclusively from the
brand owners or ad agencies, and
while they do occasionally coordinate
installation, they are mostly working
with companies that own the media
locations, which have their own installation
crews ready to go.
SpeedPro Imaging of Denver has
taken the opposite approach, however.
‘Currently for Comcast, we are only
the installation partner. For Boulder
County & Colorado Department of
Transportation, we are soup to nuts
(except design) on their bus wraps for
various Denver-Boulder routes,” noted
Schneider. He also noted that when
they do produce the graphics, they also
get into more than just printing and
installing the vinyl. “We have had to
add painting vents/grills on the buses
to roughly match the applied vinyl
graphics,” he noted as one example of
additional services the shop expanded
to off er as they got more involved in
the vertical.
Get in the game
So, how do you go about securing this
type of work? Spies-Cunningham and
Cunningham noted that it is all about
putting the shop out there. “It’s about
submitting bids with specifi c parameters,
and tailoring solutions to meet
a unique need. Learning the client’s
business needs, industry terminology,
and regulatory and compliance specifi
cations. Open communication, work-
“Logistics are the hardest part of this vertical,”
said Darin Schneider, owner of SpeedPro
Imaging of Denver. “When the client asks you
to rebrand 600+ vehicles in 10 weeks time
and to minimize down time, or have 20 buses
completely wrapped in 45 days, making sure
we have adequate staffi ng for installation
and graphics ready to go are not simple and
straight-forward.”
August 2 PrintingNewscom 017 Wide-Format & Signage 17