Buying a print or sign shop in South Florida

• 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.

• 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?

South Florida covers Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties: Miami, Hialeah, Doral, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pompano Beach, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Jupiter, and the Florida Keys down to Key West. It's the state's largest metro area and its most international. PortMiami, Port Everglades and Miami International Airport tie the region to Latin America and the Caribbean, which supports a deep base of wholesalers, freight forwarders and logistics firms, many of them near the airport. Tourism and cruises, finance and wealth management, health care, real estate and construction carry much of the rest. Palm Beach County adds wealthy seasonal residents and, out west near Lake Okeechobee, sugarcane and vegetable farms. In the Keys, nearly everything turns on visitors, fishing and boating.

Companies that serve homes, condo buildings and other businesses do well here: the building trades, property services, insurance agencies, medical and dental practices, and professional firms.

Costs run high: commercial rent, wages and, above all, property and windstorm insurance. Price the insurance before you make an offer, not after. Miami-Dade and Broward make up the Florida Building Code's High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, with stricter rules for roofs, windows and structures. That raises building costs, and it also gives steady work to the contractors who know those rules well.

Much of the workforce and many customers speak Spanish as well as English, and a company that works well in both languages has an edge. The winter season matters more in Palm Beach County and the Keys than in Miami. In the Keys, the cost of housing makes hiring and keeping staff one of the hardest parts of running a company. Ask any seller there how they find workers and where those workers live.