By signcraft
Posted on Friday, March 21st, 2025
Most small businesses don’t have a cohesive image or brand. Yet more and more often, they have to compete with chains and franchises who often do a great job of creating a strong brand for themselves. It can leave owner-operated businesses looking like sleepy mom-and-pop operations—instead of professionals who can handle the customer’s needs.
Many sign shops who have developed their design skills have found a growing market by helping small businesses create a professional image. Rich Dombey, Rich Designs, Hillsborough, New Jersey, is a great example of how successful this approach can be.
Rich’s roots are in what many call Jersey-style truck lettering, which has been talked about in SignCraft a lot over the years. A curious combination of state law (New Jersey has long required that all commercial vehicles be lettered), race car graphics and rock-and-roll album cover design happened there forty years ago.
If it wasn’t created solely by Glen Weisgerber [Glen Designs, Edison, NJ], it was surely refined by him. He inspired a generation of sign people with his stunningly innovative work. They honed it into their own styles and built on his work. As they say, the rest is history.
Rich has combined those design skills with the need for small businesses to compete successfully. He’s turned his business towards creating effective images for these businesses. SignCraft talked to Rich to learn more about how he does it.
SignCraft: How do all these great-looking trucks happen?
Rich: We approach this work a lot differently than the traditional truck lettering job. We’re talking about an image for their business that communicates what they do and who they are. We aren’t doing trucks that turn into logo sales—we’re doing logos that turn into trucks and stationery and websites and everything else they need to compete.
Some clients, of course, come to us not thinking so much about image. They just want their vehicle identified. That’s just something you have to do in the Garden State—your truck has to be lettered. If they just want to be legal, we’re fine with doing that.
But they very often see how much they could benefit from an effective image for their business. This is advertising, marketing, branding—a lot more than just identification.
SignCraft: Where are the clients coming from?
Rich: Most of the people who come to us now are coming for new design work. About 40% is still our existing clients, but most of the new clients are coming for design first.
We don’t do any advertising—we’ve built a reputation for providing quality work and quality service, so most clients are referred to us by one of our other clients. Others have seen an example of our work, liked it and asked around.
We have three main food groups we live off: contractors, landscapers and a small group of miscellaneous businesses. Mostly it’s contractors and landscape companies.
SignCraft: So the package is meant to be a cohesive image—everything they need to look like a professional.
Rich: Back in 2004, Dan Antonelli tied me to the whipping post and said, “Look, this is how you have to do things….” He’s been an integral part of our success. He really understands marketing and branding—Dan could brand, market and sell a concrete surfboard.
But yes, we strive to create a cohesive image for our clients. We know they need that to be as successful as they can be. We want them to look like professionals—like the right company for the job. And that means that every opportunity to build that image gets taken advantage of, from the website to the vehicles.
SignCraft: So you start with a logo, then show them how to use it.
Rich: Exactly. We start with a logo and build everything else off that. We tell clients that we’ll do two, sometimes three, designs to choose from. We ask a series of questions to get a feel for what kind of look they are leaning towards, and that coupled with our ideas and experience can get us headed in the right direction. Usually.
From there we present everything as a package that shows them the new designs and how they could take advantage of them. Depending on the package they choose, it might include the logo, vehicle graphics, site signs, t-shirts, a website, a Facebook splash page—any or all of them.
We make it clear that if they’ll let us, we’ll really take care of their brand. We really care about our client’s image. We emphasize that it’s about more than just run-of-the-mill vehicle lettering. A strong, appropriate image will help them be more successful.
This approach gives us the opportunity to charge considerably more than what most sign shops charge. We provide not only the visual, but also various ways that they can utilize it. The value in that is much greater.
To the client, all of our numbers are upfront and we’re still less than a design agency might charge. Most of the time our designs are more effective in a wider variety of mediums—especially on vehicles and even on job site signs.
That’s because most design agencies don’t have hands-on, front-line experience with this type of work.
I see contractor’s vehicles in the parking lots of home improvement stores and look at the lettering—more often than not, I have no idea with these people do. Call me a design snob, but too many times the designer misses the mark on the main message, and the purpose of the project fails. We’re not big fans of failure. That is one of the things we emphasize in our first meeting.
SignCraft: Packages lead to ongoing sales, too.
Rich: It’s surprising how that grows. Look at just the business cards. We used to send maybe one file a week for an order or reorder of cards. Now we send a file for business cards almost every day. Site signs, t-shirts—they’re going to need more later.
When we can show them the completed vision, as a whole, they see the benefit it adds. A lot of clients don’t know what we’re talking about when we say this. Then they see their designs and hopefully the light bulb goes on.
SignCraft: Your designs seem almost like emblems—they’re a unit, not graphics and letters floating around on a background.
Rich: We want that look—a tight design with the primary message really emphasized, and with a lot of appeal. We use prioritized sub-copy and a color palette indicative of their market.
I’ve held on to my old-school roots. I want the design to be easy to read, and I use contrast to make the key part of the message obvious to the reader. It needs to be appealing to look at—something that’s a nice change of pace from the everyday designs you see.
SignCraft: How many of these clients do you see in a week?
Rich: We’re blessed to be very busy but it really varies. Some days it seems like all we do is take orders and book vehicles. Generally, we see one or two a week that start the design process. From there we spend the rest of our time completing designs and orders.
We get a few tire kickers, but if we can’t help them, they move on. We like to work with clients that have an appreciation for the type of work we like to do and our approach to it. It’s great if they like it, but if they don’t, that’s fine, too.
We don’t really have to sell people on our work. Selling is sometimes seen as getting people to buy something they don’t really need. That’s not us. We’re more like consultants who help them get what they really need to make their business more successful. Who doesn’t want to be more successful?
One thing that’s really lacking for most small businesses is communication with their potential customers. That’s what we’re about—we help them communicate who they are and what they do as effectively as possible, and in as many ways as possible.
Some people come in to get a truck lettered and leave with a logo, a website, t-shirts, stationery—and graphics on the truck. Sometimes even they are surprised. It wasn’t that they didn’t need it. They just hadn’t considered this because they simply didn’t know it was available to them till they walked in our door. Offering a wide range of products and services also gives the opportunity to insure the original integrity of the brand remains.
SignCraft: Do you ever burn out on this—you know, run out of ideas?
Rich: Yes, absolutely. Anyone who tells you they don’t is misleading you. You need to find a personal balance. I got tired of the first 10% of the job taking 90% of the time—going through countless revisions on projects and waiting for a response. We, for lack of a better term, interview our potential clients and explain our terms, deposit requests and our approach—this has helped eliminate virtually all the tire kickers. It also really helps having Jay here to work with. He has been with me full-time for a year or so and worked with me part time for about five years before that. He brings a lot to the table—it’s great to have someone who is qualified enough to bounce ideas off. It keeps the creative energy up. We really work well together, and that makes the work easier and the results better.
While a lot of this is about how you present it, you have to be authentic, you have to be enthused about your work, and you have to maintain a positive attitude. I still wake up every morning with rose-colored glasses on. We’re positive, and we’re passionate about what we do. This is a great thing—we can ramp up a client’s business and get their phone ringing more. Our clients being busy is a great reward. We get the pleasure of being part of their success.
This article appeared in the May/June 2013 issue of SignCraft.
