Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephanie Artzner.
Stephanie, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My husband, Christopher, has been in the sign industry since he was 12 years old. He started in a neighbors garage on the weekends building channel letters and such. He worked for that company as it grew over the years for about 18 years. SCA Sign Group was started in 2007 under a DBA as a side gig for Christopher to make a little extra money to get through school and pay for our wedding.
Every year since then, the company has continued growing. In 2012 we officially filed for our LLC Partnership. He went on to get his Master Sign Electricians license. He and I have worked together over the last 7 years to build a business that started as a 1 man show to now employing 18 people. We have built a full sign fabrication shop, ADA signage department, vinyl and graphic production, 2 installation crews and we provide sign service as well. We love the creative process of the sign world and how every project we do is custom from start to finish. No job is the same and it is what drives us.
Christopher and I have been married since 2009 and we have 2 children, Hudson is 7 years old and Hadley is 4 years old. We believe that our strong family values carry over to our business and we support our employees and their families as much as we can.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
No, it has not always been a smooth road. Our company has overcome so many challenges along the way. We believe it is was makes us stronger. We try and take each challenge and learn from it. If something doesn’t go the way we hoped we look at it and figure out what went wrong, how do we fix it and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
There are a lot of moving parts to our business and just making all the different departments run smoothly is a challenge that we face daily. One thing about us and our management team is that we really work well together and have open lines of communication so when issues arise we are able to come up with a solution quickly.
As you know, we’re big fans of SCA Sign Group. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
SCA Sign Group is a full service sign company. We are your one stop shop for all your sign needs. We consult, design, permit, fabricate, install and service your signs. Our tag line is “simplifying signage” and that is exactly what we set out to accomplish for our customers.
We want to simplify the sign process for you. We know the struggles of opening a new business or moving your business – whatever the case may be and we want to make your experience of getting your sign as simple as possible. One thing that sets us apart from other companies is that Christopher is extremely involved in all aspects of the projects. His attention to detail, knowledge and 20+ years of experience really help our team grow with each project. We also offer a 5 year warranty on all signs that we manufacture and install.
We are one of the few local sign companies that manufactures and installs ADA Compliant Signs in house.
We are fully licensed and insured in the State of Texas to permit, install and service electrical signs.
Signs and graphics are usually the finishing touches to opening your business and we love to see the look on our customers faces when their sign is up for the first time. It really completes the process.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
We have learned to put the health of our employees above everything else. We have taken many precautions during the pandemic to help keep everyone safe. When the virus spread through our office and shop we brought in a Covid certified cleaning company to clean and sanitize two times a week, we implemented temperature screenings before shifts and encouraged everyone to get vaccinated as soon as it was available.
During the beginning of the pandemic we were so unsure of what the future would look like for our business and thankfully we were deemed an essential business since we service other essential businesses. A lot of projects that were in the works prior to the pandemic were put on hold and this definitely scared us a bit. We stayed pretty steady and only saw a small dip in sales during that time.
Several of our employees and the two us caught Covid, we had 12 employees at the time. At one point during the summer of 2020, we only had 3 employees working and we fell behind schedule on the projects we had in process at the time.
Being able to purchase supplies and materials became a huge challenge and we are still dealing with supply issues. Many of the materials we use on a regular basis are still hard to come by. Price increases have been a challenge for us as well. We are finally seeing a little relief on the pricing issue and prices are starting to drop a little.
Contact Info:
- Email: sales@scasigngroup.com
- Website: https://www.scasigngroup.net/
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/sca_sign_group
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/scasigngroup
