Today the company handles mostly LED projects, but they still get requests for the occasional large neon project—such as the one they’ve been working on for Primanti Bros., a chain of sandwich shops based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Monday, November 02, 2015
Serving Up Neon
Today the company handles mostly LED projects, but they still get requests for the occasional large neon project—such as the one they’ve been working on for Primanti Bros., a chain of sandwich shops based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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2 comments:
First off I want to start off by saying how much I love Primanti Brothers, I have lived in PA for little over two months and have already been there three times, which is a lot considering the location. Although neon signs are starting to fade out and become less popular I think it is really cool that Primanti Brothers has decided to stick to the old fashion ways to give the face of their stores that vintage look. I’m also very surprised that there are still companies out there that have the tech to make signs like these. These things aren’t small and they are opening ten new stores that that all need the same thing…. I would call this situation a win, win, win situation because not only is the restaurant getting there famous name back on a neon sign but city neon is also getting a lot of business and finally the customers get to see that famous look.
The install only took 3 hours? That’s incredible. Those guys really got the business down. Perhaps we could learn something from sign makers.
It’s strange. You don’t usually think of signs and scenery to be a similar business, but they really are. We use similar materials, similar skills, similar technology, similar budgets, and similar timelines.
The materials are basically the same. Neon guys are hard to find, and I’m sure they’re also very expensive. That’s why a lot of signs are using the latest neon-replacement and LED technology. That sounds a lot like a show we just did. The only huge difference is the surrounding materials. We would build channel letters out of wood, just because of cost. If we had to build something that would last a few years, we would just hire a sign company to do it.
The skills are almost exactly the same. Fabrication is fabrication.
The technology is exactly the same. Both industries are finding replacements for traditional lighting. We’re replacing EL wire and neon with LED based replacements. The sign industry is doing the exact same thing.
The budgets are almost exactly the same too. Even given the same materials, it would cost a scene shop about the same as it would cost a sign company to make a neon channel letter sign. The sign guys might be a little cheaper, because it’s what they do, but I think their probably withen the same scale of cost.
The timelines are similar too. 5 weeks for a job sounds about right. If we did a project like this in house, it would take about the same amount of time. The difference is that a scene shop might have 9 carpenters, while the sign place is probably a total of 3 people. If we had to do a sign with 1 and ½ guys, it would probably be a 4 week project for us, too.
So what is there to learn from the sign industry that we can bring straight into the scene shop? Time is money. Skilled labor is hard to find. Sub out what you can sub out, and do the important stuff in house. Oh wait, we already knew all of those things. Because it’s practically the same industry.
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