Demonstrating all the signs of success

HARDY SIGNS I PROFILE

DEMONSTRATING ALL

THE

SIGNS OF SUCCESS

We’ve all heard the story about the ‘American dream’ and how hard work can deliver success to anyone with the diligence and nous to pursue it. Though the UK doesn’t have a direct, culturally equivalent saying, Nik Hardy is the epitome of what we’ll call the ‘UK dream’. With a small bank loan and a dream to build his own company, Hardy Signs was born, and has since gone on to become an award-winning traditional and digital signage company. Article by Richard Hagan.

HARDY SIGNS I PROFILE

Hardy Signs, based in Burton upon Trent in the UK, is a professional physical and digital signage company providing solutions to all business sectors within the UK, the European Union, and beyond. The company offers a complete signage service, including surveys, signage design, manufacturing and installation.

Company owner and Managing Director Nik Hardy is a true story of self-made success, having grown the business from what was essentially nothing more than him working in his garage, to today’s Hardy Signs which employs 30 people and owns an inventory of high-tech machinery as well as a fleet of eight different vehicles.

An analogue apprenticeship

Mr Hardy began his career in signage with an eight-year-long apprenticeship at another signage manufacturer. That company was fairly traditional and completely analogue. There were no computers. And yet, the work experience that Mr Hardy gained there was formative.

“Everything was produced by hand,” he recalled. “From painting the plywood panels to signwriting them, it was all painted. It gave me an amazing grounding in the industry. I learnt my trade amongst some really skilled signwriters that in this day and age, are few and far between.

“I learned the correct use of fonts, layout, colour schemes and everything else that it takes to make a good sign and which few people seem to teach these days.”

Mr Hardy’s dream of owning his own business came unexpectedly one day when his boss approached him and offered him an opportunity to become self-employed. The company had hit hard times and, rather than simply letting him go, the owner offered to pass on the company’s incoming enquiries to him. Mr Hardy – who up until then had been, by his own description, ‘the tea boy’ – jumped at the chance.

And so it was that at 23 years old, and with the help of a £4,000 loan from the bank and a £1,000 loan from his parents, Mr Hardy bought his first vinyl cutter and went into business for himself on the 1st of August 1993. He began by working under the wing of his former boss, at first from his own home, and then, beginning in 1997, from workshops rented from the same former employer.

It was around this time that Mr Hardy’s brother, Tom, would leave school and join the ranks of his brother’s company. More than two decades later, Tom has helped steer the success of the company and oversees the day-to-day running in his role as Operations Director.

A big move into new premises

In 2011, after around 18 successful and fast-growing years in business, the company celebrated three major milestones.

First was its signing of a lucrative signage contract with British DIY retailer B&Q. Simultaneously, the company firmly moved into the digital era, with a switch to digital signage. The third was purchasing and moving into Hardy Place, the company’s current headquarters where all of its

HARDY SIGNS I PROFILE

design and production takes place and from which all surveys and installations are carried out. After 17 years of renting spaces, Hardy Place was the first premises proudly owned by the company.

There’s no shortage of top-tier fabrication equipment inside Hardy Place. The company boasts comprehensive machinery including two large-format UV digital printing machines, two vinyl cutters and two latex printers. There’s also a CNC router, lamination rollers and cutting machines, as well as a full-service design department. It plans to add a steel fabrication workshop in the near future as well, including welding and laser cutting facilities.

Outside, its fleet of ten vehicles ranges from long wheelbase high top vans to sales rep vehicles. Naturally, all are fully liveried to ensure that the company name is properly represented wherever its vehicles go.

Mr Hardy drew special attention to the industry-leading inks used by his company: “All of our inks are water-based, eco-friendly inks with no harmful fumes or vapours,” he underlined. “Sustainability and carbon footprint reduction through measures like these are very important to us. It’s also helped us appeal to bigger stakeholders and clients who demand that.”

Apprenticeships for a new era

Given his experience and background, apprenticeship programs are close to Mr Hardy’s heart. For that reason, in 2016 his company proudly opened the Hardy Sign and Print Academy in partnership with a local college. The academy’s aim is to expose school-leavers to the signage industry and to give them an opportunity to learn the skills needed to excel in it.

“We bring on apprentices and give them industry experience in a classroom environment,” said Mr Hardy. “I’m very proud of it. We’ve had ten apprentices through it in the past five years. Of those, about six have gone on to be permanently employed by us, directly through that opportunity.”

Altruism isn’t the only reason the academy exists, however. It has great strategic value to the company as well.

“We have a lot of established staff with us, but if we want to grow, we need to bring in apprentices before they’ve picked up bad habits and while they’re still a blank canvas – they need to learn ‘the Hardy way’!” he chuckled. “Once they’ve signed up to our vision and seen how excited we are about the future, they tend to stick with us. We’re creating signmakers of the future.”

As a result of the academy’s success, Mr Hardy was awarded an honorary fellowship through Burton upon Trent and South Derbyshire College for his work in linking business to education.

In further recognition of Hardy Signs’ achievements, in both 2019 and in 2020 the East Midlands and Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce awarded the company with Manufacturer of the Year, achievements of which the company is extremely proud.

Malls, milk and motorsport

Hardy Signs has been involved in some outstanding recent projects that Mr Hardy was keen to highlight.

The first was its rebranding of the Derbion shopping centre in Derby in the UK. The mall had gone into liquidation

and was then purchased by a new owner who immediately issued a tender for new signage. Hardy Signs won the contract.

“It involved a lot of high-level signage,” Mr Hardy noted. “We had a team of abseilers fitting the signs. It was a real win for the company.”

Müller Milk in the UK and Ireland is another high-profile account on the company’s books. “We’ve worked with Müller Milk for many years. They’ve gradually entrusted us with more and more key projects,” Mr Hardy acknowledged.

A particularly exciting project came through the doors in 2021 when Hardy Signs was asked to wrap two Formula 1 cars at short notice.

“We had to have our fitters working over the weekend and through the night to get the car launched and on to the podium for Silverstone,” said Mr Hardy, who was unable to reveal which team the cars belonged to.

Covid, diversification and the future

The onset of Covid-19 has presented opportunities as well as peculiar challenges for Hardy Signs. The company was quick out of the gates with offering acrylic sneezeguards, but soon ran into an unexpected supply problem: nobody had any stock of clear acrylic.

“There was a global shortage,” Mr Hardy recalled. “We had some real fun and games sourcing it. You wouldn’t think that you’d run out of everyday products like that!”

Supply has since stabilised, resulting in the company investing in a machine to bend the acrylic to match the shape of curved desks, as well as to fold it in order to allow the sneezeguards to stand upright. Meanwhile, it also battled another unexpected global shortage, this time of yellow ink.

“All of the printers were hurriedly printing the green safety floor stickers which require a lot of yellow to print. It was a real problem at the time!” Mr Hardy exclaimed.

Hardy Signs has continued to offer clients a complete array of Covid-related signage solutions, including floor stickers, screens and health and safety stickers, even diversifying into sanitising stations.

Mr Hardy said: “Hardy Signs has been recognised with awards as a leading manufacturer of the year across the East and West Midlands and Staffordshire. This shows the high quality and determination of our team’s work.”

Despite the challenges of Covid-19, Mr Hardy is optimistic about the future.

“We’ve been keeping an eye on the trends in the area through our involvement with the chambers of commerce. Raw material prices continue to be a challenge, but we expect to grow our turnover in 2022. We had a record sales year in 2019, then it all fell off a cliff in 2020. Despite that, we still traded profitably in 2020 and that’s a good thing. In 2021 we experienced better trading conditions, and in 2022 we are expecting a record year,” he concluded. n