SIGNARAMA Franchise Complaints

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• Do not open new Signarama UFG without confidentiality agreements, 30 day training at your new store and in the market with your onboarding “START-UP MENTOR” doing everything hands-on to include processing multiple (as many as 20--all scenarios) mock orders from PR to final payment, Owner, Sales, Info, Designer, Start-Up Mentor, all 5 making 20 PR calls per day each for total of 100 PR calls per day for 4 weeks before opening, introducing your new Signarama as locally owned and operated, high quality signs, guaranteed low cost which means match or beat pricing, opening in 30 days, survey what types of signs do they typically buy, last bought from who, etc, who would we follow up with as soon as we open? Then direct mail 10% Off Grand Opening coupon valid for 90-days with invitation to stop by new showroom for a free 2-sided custom yard sign to all 2,000 new potential customers that you just called on, all paid for by Signarama UFG, with a 90-day guarantee to meet or exceed 3-month sales goal of $50,000 @ 50% margin. If franchisee/owner not happy with the results, Signarama UFG will convert franchise location to corporate and re-market to other local prospective owners with the Start-Up Mentor working onsite glove to glove during the first 30 days. Don't Worry--90 Day Guarantee--Be Happy!

• K have personally know five different SAR owners. None have been happy with the franchise. Three are gone, two are unprofitable after 10 years, plus.

  I have a little sign shop. We are always profitable. But then we don't have SAR's hand in our pocket, not are we working out of a store they leased on unfavorable terms for us.

• The large format sector is not a bad business to be in. It’s has its ups an downs but can be very profitable. Cost are low and there are plenty of products to sell. I looked At sign a rama but ended up buying a going independent company.

  Signarama has removed their field support and has not been able to grow. They can’t hold onto employees and have huge turn over rates with corporate staff, especially in the support and sales are. Their only goal is to sell locations. They’ve lost close to 250 locations since Jim Tatem took over. I recently saw there’s been a change in leadership. I’m surprised that they held on to him for so long.

• Thank God I was able to get out out of my signarama contract. Best thing that ever happened to me. They had some second rate attorney send me what basically amounted to a form letter full of threats. After my attorney fired back,they went away and it was over just like that. If you don't want to be a signarama any more then it's pretty much as simple as changing your name and putting a new sign on your building, You can keep your phone number,email address and all that good stuff.

  It's a sinking ship. Look at how many franchises they had ten years ago compared to today.

  Good job Cindy Novak!

• If nothing has changed since I did it, this is what you get for your franchise fees when you sign on with Sign A Rama:
  - Two weeks of training. You can’t earn how to make signs in two weeks even if that’s the sole focus thereof, and it’s not. In those same two weeks, rudimentary estimating is taught, very basic bookkeeping is taught, and a lot of time is given over to preferred vendors to make a sales pitch to you for their services. Special emphasis is placed throughout on making sure you always make your royalty payments accurately and on time.

  - Help finding and leasing a shop. In my case, this was actually helpful… once I got them past their obsession with having me go into a retail center.

  - A package of supplies and equipment via a lease UFG arranges through a third party vendor. Two problems there: First, you’ll use up the supplies that are in that lease in 90 days to six months, but will be paying interest on them for five years. Second, my banker told me he could have easily saved me $400 a month had I gone through him… and my bank was not known for being the cheapest lender on the market.

  - Advisers who will visit your shop on a semi-regular basis, supposedly to offer you assistance in growing your business. The first thing they do upon arrival is check your books, to make sure your royalty payments have been made properly. Them they surf the web, book tee times, or text friends, after which they go to a two hour lunch. Upon return, they talk to you a bit about sports or the weather, then present you with their advice on how to grow your business: “Increase sales”.

  - Access to their preferred vendor list, with special products at special pricing. One example of how this works: LED “OPEN” signs. Every business that is open to the public needs one, right? Should be a slam dunk sale. And that’s how it seemed, until we found we couldn’t sell them, even for what we paid for them. Why? Because Costco had the exact same signs for less than the preferred vendor’s “special pricing for Sign A Rama franchisees”.

  - Having to pay a royalty that is a higher percentage of your gross than the percentage most businesses get to keep in a successful year.

  There’s more, but you get the point… and btw, from what I’ve heard, UFG does not have an exclusive on this type of franchise experience. True, some have done well as a UFG franchisee... but after you're on board you learn that those are the exceptions. The question is, is that a gamble you want to take?

  If I had it to do over again, I’d do it differently. If you are seriously thinking of opening a sign shop – and the business itself can be fun and rewarding – I have a suggestion. Instead of paying a large franchise fee, try looking outside your immediate area for a friendly sign shop owner. Tell he or she that you’ll work for free for 90 days or six months, in exchange for them training you on how to sell signs, market signs, design signs, build signs, install signs, and how to do the books… plus advice on what equipment to buy and what you can skip. Or, you can offer to pay them a reasonable fee for the same stuff, or a combination thereof. You’ll learn more, understand more, and be better prepared to start your business and ultimately succeed. Starting a business is hard, and building one to success is harder. Why make it harder still by going the franchise route, and enabling someone else to make more money off of your efforts and investment than you do? Franchising isn't my cup of tea, but could it work for you? That's a call only you can make.... but please go into it with your eyes wide open.

• I bought a signarama franchise in late 2017, sold at the start of 2020 for the same price that I paid for it, but, I had invested way too much money, never pulled an income, so overall, I lost a lot of $$ but gained a lot of wisdom. I didn't do bad, in fact, overall I think I did well, taking a bad business from an 8k a month turnover to nearly 40k a month in less than 2 years. I have made a lot of mistakes, I don't blame anyone but me for my lack of wisdom. I have written some thoughts, some positive but, sadly mostly negative.
  -one of the reasons you buy a franchise, is for the on going support and advice. I realised as time went on, that you won't get much advice from head office unless it's about marketing. I came to the conclusion that signarama/UFG is not a sign company, but a marketing company, they are good at marketing business's to sell. They know very little about sign making . Secondly, they would be very reluctant to give any real advice, why? if you act on any direct advice and it turns out to be bad advice, you can then sue UFG. They don't like this, so, they advise their support people to give general advice only, and nothing direct.
  - I knew the business I was buying was in bad shape and was given a 25% discount from a new price. but, when I got in, I found out that most of the equipment was 10 years old and needed replacing. I essentially had to replace 90% of the equipment. I had been lied to about the state of the equipment.
  - I was advised the previous owner had it for about 2 years and hadn't done much, so I would be starting with a blank canvas. I found out that the business had been in existence for 20 years and had at least 5 previous owners, all of which had done a bad job and given my particular store a really bad name. I managed to turn this around, but it cost me a lot of $$. Again, I had been lied to.
  -As I was new to business I advised head office that I would need extra training to get me up to speed, but I knew once I was trained that I would have the work ethic to do well. Well, the training, is 2 weeks in Florida. Nice, well, unless you have to travel half way around the world to get there. So, due to bad flights and bad scheduling, I had less then 24 hours rest after 36 hours of travel time. I spent the first week trying to get over the travel, so missed out on a lot. 2nd week, was American supplier trying to sell their products, as opposed to actually learning stuff. This was pointless to a non American. On return to home country, I was expecting 5 days with a mentor, well, the mentor was super busy and gave me about 2 hours of his time. Then comes the fun part, the setup. Well, that got delayed a few times, so 3 weeks after the expected initial start date, I finally get access to the business. The place was super filthy, we ended up filling two large dump bins of rubbish and then spent 2 days of cleaning just so we could be in the place. I then found out I was only getting 5 days of training due to the delayed start. The trainer I had, wasn't really interested, just went through the motions. I found out later that the week before, he had been advised to look for a job, but to stay on to train myself and the next 4 owners. We all had the same complaints about the lack of training, but head office never cared. So, for the promised 25 days of training, I reckon I had less then 10 days of actual training.
  -Follow up support. hahahaha. Once the trainer left me, I never saw any support for 5 months, oh wait, there was this one time that a support person came and visited me because my royalty report hadn't gone through. He was with me for an hour. The reason I saw a support person at 5 months, well, that's because i had become tired of calling and not getting help so put in a formal complaint. I was sat down with a manager and the support person, where I was initially told that I'm not suited. When I explained the problems that I had faced and the lack of support I received, the manager realised that there was a problem. The next week, the support person had left and I had direct access to the manager until a new support person came along. They got one, a really good guy, but sadly, he was too good and once many owners realised this, his time was spread thin across too many owners. I have maintained friendship with this support guy after I left the cult of signarama.
  -Software - Corebridge. This is the POS software that is used by Signarama now. There is nothing positive I can say about it. it's slow, clunky, hard to setup and very expensive. No owner wants to use it, but head office have forced owner to go onto it, no matter what.
  -One of the biggest issues I found was that Signarama has been around for a while now, over twenty years in my city. The problem is that as the owners are not vetted, nor trained, signarama has actually got a bad name, particularly with sign writers. pretty much most sign writers that are worth their wage will not work for a signarama due to the bad reputation. so, as a franchise owner, you will always struggle to get good people. The number one complaint in every owners meeting, is the lack of good sign writers that will work for signarama. As staff is your biggest asset, the fact you can't get good staff, is, in my humble opinion the main reason why most signarama's will struggle. Don't believe me? If you are interested in buying a signarama, go ask ten store owners what their three biggest problems are. I guarantee you, getting quality staff will be one of them.
  -other owners. in general, I found that one of the biggest strengths was the fellow owners, particularly the guys who had been around for a long time. Their advice was awesome and much appreciated. I will say, that there are some owners who only look out for themselves and will take advantage of you at any chance, so be careful, not all owners are good.
  -Another major problem was that there were too many store for a given area. I had 5 stores within 20 minutes drive. There just wasn't enough work to cover the five store, and, customers were often calling 3 or 4 stores and getting quotes and making us fight against each other, knowing we were all screaming for work. None of the store were profitable, one store went through 2 owners in less than 18 months, both owners closing the doors, losing everything. Head office still made lots of money from selling the same store twice.

  From what I have learnt, the business model has some merit, but overall, not worth the money. There are some stores that do well, maybe 20% of stores, some stores that break even, maybe 20%, the rest, are struggling.
  I will have another business, but I will never have another franchise, UFG has burnt me.