Vinyl, in laymen’s terms, is simply the material placed on sign faces to make the design/words. It comes in several colors, is cut using a plotter, and with its adhesive backing is applied to various substrates to make signs. What most people do not know, however, is that
there are varying degrees of quality when it comes to vinyl. Simply put, the lower grade vinyl will not last nearly as long as the higher grade material. The weather extremes and searing south Texas heat will quickly begin to take its toll: the vinyl will either begin to crack and peel away, or the colors will begin to fade or alter. Or both. The sign above – made by one of our competitors – was less than 2 years old and had begun to deteriorate almost immediately. The customer had spent thousands of dollars on these signs and, in no time, they were left illegible and worthless.
Many sign companies – especially the newer and one-man garage-shops – will use the low quality vinyl, incentivized by its lower cost because, truth be told, when the vinyl is new there isn’t much to visually differentiate between the different grades. In other words, it’s easy to pull the wool over the customers’ eyes.
Ironically, consumers understand the difference between premium brands and economy brands in most scenarios and they know to expect a difference in quality and cost between the two. But when it comes to signs, shoppers too often mistakenly assume all materials are the same. And this can be the most costly scenario of all.
Here at Signs of SA, we have and will always use premium vinyl. That’s why most of the signs we’ve done 5, 10, even 20+ years ago still look good today!
