Brauer’s shop makes it a point to listen to and hear what the customer is telling them.
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Sign Builder Illustrated
December 2018
signshop.com
FASTSIGNS of Appleton Photos: Donna Gehl at Image Studios Inc.
Doug Brauer has surrounded himself with quality employees at both of his FASTSIGNS locations.
leading sales generators in their system. They currently have nineteen employees in Appleton and six in Green Bay. “We have long-tenured people here. In fact, I have one employee who has been with us since day one,” says Brauer. “If you get a good employee, treat them well and pay them well, and they’ll be happy and take care of you.” Although overseeing two sign shops might seem like a daunting task, Brauer finds advantages. “You can share employees and equipment back-and-forth, when needed. It’s also important to have a good manager in our Green Bay location whom I can rely on day in and day out—Amanda Pahl who started up with us in Appleton,” he says. Speaking of equipment, Brauer doesn’t purchase hardware just to have it; instead he picks pieces out based on his customers’ needs. The Appleton location features HP Latex 850 and 360 roll-to-roll printers, an Epson SureColor F-6200 roll-toroll printer, an HP 750 flatbed, a Zünd cutter, a Gerber 408 router, as well as laminators and plotters. The Green Bay shop runs with an HP 500 roll-to-roll printer, an Epson SureColor F-600, and laminators and plotters. “I try to grow our business with our customers,” he says. One new piece of hardware that will soon be implemented at their Appleton location is the new SwissQ flatbed printer. In fact, they’ll be the first FASTSIGNS in the country to own one. “We’re excited because it offers great speed and quality, and it has features we don’t have right now,” says Brauer. “It will be the most expensive piece of equipment we have in our shop, but we will have enough projects for it to make a quicker return-oninvestment, especially since we’re doing more work with ad agencies.” Brauer’s FASTSIGNS centers have produced a lot of ADA signage, fleet graphics, and point-of-purchase displays. They cater to a lot of construction companies as well, and because of expansion taking place in the area, Brauer has noticed an increase in wayfinding projects, which they’ve ridden to sales success over the past year(s). One of the biggest projects both of Brauer’s FASTSIGNS locations worked on recently was coming up with