By signcraft
Posted on Monday, March 18th, 2024
In 44 years of doing SignCraft, we’ve rarely asked readers to share their annual sales numbers in our Reader Surveys because we assumed that they would be reluctant to share that information. At the same time, sign business owners ask us frequently if there is a source for these averages so that they can see how their business compares.
But when Brad Getter [Megagraphics, Loleta, California] recently suggested that we do a survey to determine what the average annual sales per customer was, we decided to ask readers to help us do that. Well over 200 readers responded—and we thank you all. It’s enabled us to put together some very interesting and helpful data from the results.
The demographics of the group
First, a bit of background on those who responded. Most were owners of mainstream sign businesses. 60% were commercial sign shops that did flat and 3D signs, vehicle lettering and the like. The remaining 40% were full service shops that included electric signs among the services they offered.
They were experienced. 73% had been involved in the sign industry for over 20 years and were 50 years of age or older. Their market size was roughly split between large urban areas, suburban communities, midsize towns and small towns.
As for their staff size, 43% had one to three employees, 36% had four or more and 21% work alone. 39% said their shop was over 3000 sq. ft., 39% said their shop was 100 to 3000 sq. ft. and the balance worked out of 1000 sq. ft. or less.
Now for some of the numbers.
Total annual sales for 2023:
Let’s start with the overall averages, starting with their annual sales in 2023:
Under $100000: 12%
$100K to $200K: 13%
$201K to $300K: 16%
$310K to $500K: 19%
$501K to $700K: 6%
$701K to $1 million: 12%
$1M to $1.5M: 7%
$1.6M to $3M: 6%
over $3M: 7%
The respondents were fairly evenly spread across those ranges. Take a look at those numbers as a chart:
Number of customers served:
Over 150 provided their total number of customers served in 2023. Brad says one benefit of knowing your annual sales per customer is to see how you fit with the averages. “If you have 200 customers per year,” he says, “and most shops your size have 350, maybe you need to get shakin’ with some marketing.”
The overall average number of customers served was 361. Though there was considerable variation, about 80% of the respondents said they served 400 customers or less. Here’s a more detailed look:
28% said they served 100 customers or less.
28% said they served 101 to 200 customers.
13% said they served 201 to 300 customers.
10% said they served 301 to 400 customers.
6% said they served 401 to 500 customers.
10% said they served 500 to 1000 customers.
8% said they served over 1000 customers.
Those numbers are for all the respondents. Another interesting take on this data, though, is to look at the average served by the gross sales of the sign company. Here are those numbers as a chart:
The companies with gross sales under $500,000 had between 125 to 275 customers for the year. Companies with gross sales over $500,000 served considerably more customers—about 550 to 675.
Dollar value of a customer:
Another helpful piece of information is to know what a customer is worth to you on average in the course of a year. The actual dollars spent varies widely from customer to customer, of course, because one may buy few yard signs and the other may buy three van wraps. But this number is the average for everyone who responded, which is their total gross sales divided by the number of customers served:
The average dollar value of a customer for companies by gross sales:
For companies grossing under $100K it was $562.
For companies grossing $101K to $200K it was $1250.
For companies grossing $201K to $300K it was $1352.
For companies grossing $301K to $400K it was $1321.
For companies grossing $401K to $500K it was $2006.
For companies grossing $501K to $1M it was $1324.
For companies grossing $1M or more it was $4982.
As you would expect, the companies with the highest dollar value per customer are those with the highest gross sales because most of their work has larger selling prices, such as electric signs. Here are those numbers as a chart:
Brad says the average annual sales per customer is a great tool for sign shops. You should see if your shop is within the averages before trying to work for less to accommodate customers who think you’re too expensive.
“We need to look at the numbers before cutting corners or prices to get work,” he says. “Sometimes the reason for price pressures by customers is the number of customers the shop is servicing. We can get blinded by price pressures from a small but vocal group.”
We’ll have more information from the survey soon, but these are some of the most relevant statistics from the results. Stay tuned!
Don’t miss the comments
There were a lot of great comments from those who helped out with the survey, with plenty of hard-earned wisdom and tips—and inspiration. Don’t overlook them!
“Fire ALL of your bad customers. It will feel good and make your life a lot easier.”
“It’s not about your volume but your profit percentage!”
“Our shop over the years has consistently spent, on average, 25 cents to make a dollar.”
“Low overhead is the key for me!”
“Our hourly rate is $150.”
“‘Have brush, will travel.’ 95% of our business is window sign painting. We travel the country, coast to coast, and don’t have a shop! We work out of our pickup truck, and our average sale is $2075.”
“Keeping overhead in check always trumps the amount of gross sales. It’s not the number of invoices or customers per year that determines my success!”
“When I opened the vinyl shop in 2004 my sales for the year was $50,000. I never dreamed then that we would reach 1,000,000 dollars in sales after 20 years, but we did it! Yeah!”
“I am a one-man shop. For years, 45% of my revenue was removing and installing fleet graphics. I no longer do this work. I sub out installations, too. When I accepted removal work, return was poor. It’s not worth pursuing. I removed in excess of 24,000 cargo trucks over 30 years.”
“We are a true family business started by a stay-at-home mom needing extra income. It now supports five families!”
“Business is great but it’s never been harder to deal with the general public!”
“I’m not sure how many different customers I had, but last year we did a total of about 530 jobs and grossed just over $500,000.”
“We are not the cheapest sign shop around (and there are a lot of sign shops in my area). So if a customer starts off saying they are looking for the cheapest price for a job, we have learned to quickly tell them that we are not the sign shop for them because we custom fabricate every sign, and they would be better off going someplace else. We don’t suggest any other sign shop, we’re just trying not to kill 30 minutes with a ‘tire kicker’.”
“Our numbers are thanks to a couple of national accounts, using quality materials, and giving superior customer service, because honestly there are a ton of sign makers out there. Another hint: answer the phone! And encourage the email/text customer to have a conversation. It’s difficult to make a real connection in an email. Also ask questions. Don’t assume the customer knows exactly what they need. You’re the person that lives and breathes signs, and often the customer has no idea what they really need. And what they think they need may not be what they really need! Be their Google!”
“The number of customers can be misleading. We get the majority of our work from nationwide sign companies so that number is much less than if I strictly worked for local businesses.”
“Charge more! Everything costs more these days.”
