Sign of times is treated to last

POSITIVE SIGNS: When signs National Marker Co. was shipping to customers kept getting damaged, the company started looking for a solution. The result was a scratch-resistant laminate that the company realized could also be treated to protect signs from fading and allow graffiti to be easily removed. Black. Above, owner Michael Black moves a sheet of Fatheads to a cutting machine. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO
POSITIVE SIGNS: When signs National Marker Co. was shipping to customers kept getting damaged, the company started looking for a solution. The result was a scratch-resistant laminate that the company realized could also be treated to protect signs from fading and allow graffiti to be easily removed. Black. Above, owner Michael Black moves a sheet of Fatheads to a cutting machine. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO

Michael J. Black had a problem in 2011 that no president of a sign-manufacturing company wants to have: the signs he was shipping couldn’t make it to customers without being damaged.
“When we would ship it, it was getting scratched,” said Black, owner and president of North Smithfield-based National Marker Co. “The way it left and the way the customer received it – it looked like two different products.”
NMC’s products include safety-identification items, such as signs, tags and labels, with a high-stakes need for clarity and longevity. Black’s employees started shrink wrapping all their signs, but the extra step was slowing down their process considerably.
Then NMC’s director of operations, Udo Virmalo, came across a laminator and started working on a scratch-resistant product with an outside company that Black declined to name. They decided that they wanted the product to also protect signs from fading from UV exposure, be chemical resistant and graffiti should be easily removed. Two years and more than $500,000 later, they found what they were looking for.
“It started out as graffiti-proof, and then we worked on the chemical resistance and then we built into the UV,” Black said.
Black decided to field-test the product and see if NMC could keep up with the volume before telling clients.
“We were literally putting it on the product for a year before we even told anybody,” he said.
In 2012, NMC officially unveiled the product, complete with a snappy new name: Sign Muscle. The company has not increased prices for treated signs, partially because Black didn’t want to increase inventory, but also because he knew he wanted every NMC sign to use it.
“I really wanted to … build a brand for National Marker Company that basically the sign that we sold was very different from everything else out on the market, with the same appeal of a very competitive price,” he said.
Black, who bought NMC in 2012, said revenue has increased drastically since the product’s debut.
“Since Sign Muscle, it’s been more than 20 percent each year. We almost had a 30 percent growth last year, we had (in the) high 20s this year,” he said. “In the past two years … we’re currently making twice as much product, twice as fast and we’re only doing it with a 20 percent increase in workers.” Once hardened, Sign Muscle is chemical-resistant to a whole host of substances, including paint thinner, carburetor cleaner and ammonia. Black said it is scratch- and UV-resistant. NMC ships test kits in some of its boxes that include a permanent marker and some alcohol wipes.
“They can take a permanent marker to their signage, and with just a regular alcohol wipe or with the alcohol you get from your local drug store, it takes it right off,” Black said. “There’s no secret formula.”
Black says it’s the application method that makes Sign Muscle work.
“People have called us all over the United States. ‘Can I put it on my car? Can I put it on a wall?’ ” he said. “Really, it’s the drying process that we’ve created. … It basically bakes in.”
NMC trademarked Sign Muscle in September of this year, and filed for a utility patent in June. Black expects to continue NMC’s rapid growth.
“Our goal is to double the size of the business in the next four years,” he said.
NMC has grown considerably since its 1934 inception, when it produced signs for fire extinguishers and fire escapes. It changed hands several time, including a stint as part of Cranston Print Works, owned by the Rockefellers. Black joined the company as national sales manager in 1998 after being hired by then-owner Jim Burns – a man he said was described to him as “the godfather in the safety market.” He was promoted to vice president of sales and marketing the next year, and in 2000 became president. In 2011, Black found out that NMC was up for sale, and was put under a confidentiality agreement for the proceedings.
“I was coming to work every day, looking at people in their faces, recognizing how much we had grown,” he said. “All I kept seeing was all the competition wanted to do was close the doors.”
Black decided to make an offer himself and became the company’s new owner.
“I feel very fortunate in regards to running a company that has such great people,” Black said. “We see double-digit growth continuing into a market that’s basically flat, and I think we continue to reinvent ourselves.” •

COMPANY PROFILE
National Marker Co.
OWNER: Michael J. Black
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Manufacturing
LOCATION: 100 Providence Pike, North Smithfield
EMPLOYEES: About 70
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1934
ANNUAL SALES: WND

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