Johnson Sign Co. is a member of the WSA (World Sign Associates) which is made up of a nationwide community of business leaders within the sign industry. The organization, made up of almost 150 sign companies, is a great resource for collaborating within the sign community on how to make your business better through topics such as leadership, HR, equipment, and organizational structure.

To demonstrate WSA’s commitment to making others better, advancing the sign industry and fostering the open sharing of information, WSA holds a competition every year called Tricks of the Trade. One Trick of the Trade can be submitted per company with a criteria of demonstrating how innovative improvements were made within the company (administration, management, production, installation/service, sales, design) that have shown measurable results. After Trick of the Trade submissions have been entered, each division votes on a winner. The WSA is made up of 8 divisions that are based on where each sign company is located geographically. From there each division winner presents their Trick of the Trade at the national annual WSA conference.

The trick of the trade that we submitted was centered around improving the fabrication process of custom signage. We had a large health care program that consisted of custom monuments and pylon signs. The custom nature of these signs were the radius cabinets that had routed out aluminum faces with push through acrylic letters. To fabricate these radius cabinets was labor intensive. Knowing that we had a large number of these to produce in a set time frame, we started brainstorming on how we could create a better process to build these. We created a steel pegboard welding table. This allowed us to manufacture these radius cabinets with approximately 50% less manufacturing hours. Not only did we save a lot of valuable time with our manufacturing hours, this also allowed the quality of these radius cabinets to dramatically improve.

After winning our division Trick of the Trade, we went on to present at the annual WSA conference in San Diego, CA against other sign companies nationwide. After going to a vote, Johnson Sign Co. was named the winner of the 2023 Trick of the Trade and received a trophy and cash prize.

We are very honored to win Trick of the Trade as the competition is reviewed and voted on by other sign companies within our industry. Not only are we able to help others that can implement our Trick of the Trade into their manufacturing process, but we also receive a lot of value from the other companies that submitted their Trick of the Trade.