Buying a print or sign shop in Florida

Print shops produce business cards, brochures, forms, direct mail, labels, banners, trade show displays and promotional products. Sign shops make and install storefront signs, monument signs, vehicle wraps, and directional and interior signs. Many shops do both, using wide-format printers that work for either side.

Customers are mostly local businesses, real estate offices, schools, churches, medical practices, builders and local governments. Orders are mostly one-off jobs, but good shops have customers who reorder constantly: a property manager who needs signs for every new community, a franchise owner's menus and banners, a builder's yard signs and truck lettering. Installed signs are bigger jobs that combine design, permits, fabrication and installation.

The business runs on equipment: digital presses, wide-format printers, cutters, routers and laminators, and for signs, fabrication tools and a bucket or boom truck. A typical shop has front counter staff and an estimator, designers, production staff and installers. Many shops send some work (large offset print runs, channel letters for lighted signs) to wholesale printers and fabricators that sell only to other shops.

• A base of business accounts that reorder often, with no single customer dominating sales.
• Equipment that's current, well maintained, and owned or on reasonable leases, since an aging press can mean a large purchase soon after you buy.
• Prices that cover ink, materials and labor, set with estimating software rather than guesswork.
• Designers who can produce finished work without the owner.
• For sign work: a permit process that runs smoothly, installers with good safety records, and good relationships with local building departments.
• An online ordering portal for repeat customers, which keeps reorders coming without sales effort.
• Steady work from schools, local governments or builders that buy year after year.

Printing needs no state license, just a local business tax receipt. Signs are different. Installing electrical signs counts as electrical contracting, and the Electrical Contractors' Licensing Board certifies sign specialty contractors to do it, up to the last disconnect (rule 61G6-7.001). The certification belongs to the person who qualifies the business, so find out who that is and whether they'll stay. Many cities and counties also license sign contractors and require permits. Ask where the shop works and whether any permits are still open.

Signs on a business's own premises need no state permit (section 479.16). Billboards along interstates, federal-aid primary highways and state highways outside urban areas need a permit from FDOT (the Florida Department of Transportation) for each sign face. The permit is tied to that location and can transfer to a new owner with the seller's written acknowledgment (section 479.07). Running a billboard business takes an outdoor advertising license, but building signs for others doesn't (section 479.04).

Buying more than half of a business or its assets can make you liable for the seller's unpaid state taxes, up to the price or the value, whichever is greater, unless the Department of Revenue issues a certificate of compliance (section 213.758). Also check that the shop keeps resale certificates from customers who resell what they buy.

• The equipment list with age, condition, service contracts and lease terms, and whether leases can be transferred. Press leases with service agreements can be expensive to break.
• Revenue and gross margin by customer and by product line. Promotional products and outsourced work often carry thinner margins than work done in-house.
• Installation problems: signs that failed, leaks into buildings, storm damage claims.
• Insurance, including liability for installations and coverage for installation trucks.
• Who holds the sign or electrical license and pulls permits.
• Design files and customer artwork: who owns them and where they're stored.
• Supplier pricing for ink and materials, and how much inventory is on hand.
• Deposits taken on jobs not yet delivered or installed, which you'd owe in finished work.
• Waste ink, solvents and cleaning rags, and how they're stored and disposed of.

• Which customers reorder every month, and what do they buy?
• How old are the main printers, and when will they need replacing?
• What work do you send out to other shops?
• Who holds the license for sign installation, and who pulls permits?
• Have any signs you installed failed or been damaged in storms?
• How do you price jobs, and when did you last raise prices?
• Which customers deal with you personally rather than with your staff?