Randy Nordquist on running his family’s 100-year-old sign company with modern-day design sense
Randy Nordquist can be forgiven for extolling the beauty of the St. Paul skyline: His company, Nordquist Sign Co. Inc., made most of the signs that distinguish it from sign-free downtown Minneapolis. He runs the company founded by his great-grandfather, Gust, who 100 years ago last year began painting simple real estate signs. Nordquist has repositioned the company to serve high-end customers with up-to-the-minute design sensibilities. But he still holds to Gust’s philosophy.
“I’ve been president for 10 years, and I was a manager for 10 years before that. I’ve switched the focus from local, hand-painted signs to a company that provides architectural signs, metal signs, many types of signs for local and national clients.
Design was where there was a lot of growth. There’s a field called environmental graphic design. It’s a combination of architecture, interior design, industrial design. They’re looking at the whole of projects.
Another example is the whole New Town movement, where towns are trying to recreate a Main Street. Everything becomes about the consumer experience.
I became interested in this almost by accident. There were a couple of early environmental design projects. One was Riverplace, on the riverfront in Minneapolis. We did that and got some national attention for it. We had people on staff that had backgrounds in fine art and industrial design. We could bring both together on a project like that.
The company was founded by my great-grandfather in his garage on Grand Avenue a few blocks away. He began painting plywood real estate signs for Thorpe, a big real estate company at the time. He went to Mr. Thorpe and he said, ‘It’s not enough. I can’t feed my family.’ And Mr. Thorpe said, ‘I’ll get you some more customers.’ He did, and we became the king of the real estate boards.
My father came into the business in the 1950s. They did a lot of electrical signs then, like Northwestern Bank, First Bank, a lot of names that are gone now. The infamous WCCO weatherball for Northwestern — those were made here.
I came in in 1975. I was going to law school at William Mitchell and I was looking for a way to pay for tuition. I graduated, passed the bar, but never practiced law. I thought the sign business was a good business.
We’ve made a lot of signs in downtown St. Paul. We built the 10-foot letters on top of the St. Paul Travelers building, the Securian sign, Ecolab, Lawson. We’re kind of the king of downtown St. Paul.
We market to the high-end designers and architects. We’re known as people who can handle complex projects. We did the signs outside of Mall of America. From bid to installation, that was a five- to six- month project. It took 3,000 man-hours, easily. We have about 45 employees. The Mall of America, the bid was about $175,000 per entrance.
The skyline in Minneapolis is beautiful. There’s a lot of fantastic architecture. Who can argue with Philip Johnson and I.M. Pei? On the other hand, there’s a lot of mistakes. I don’t think anybody would stand on 10th and Hennepin looking north and say, what a beautiful city.
St. Paul’s got some vitality problems, but if you look at the pockets of vitality it’s on the right track. I think people who want to live in an urban environment like that kind of visual activity. When you come into a city that has signs, it tells you who’s a player in that community. Cities that have signs, like Chicago and New York, they feel more urban. . . .
To develop my design sense, I’ve hired people that have it and I’ve learned from them. I’ve learned a lot from our customers. Our core client is very high end.
Does a sign matter? If you’re Wells Fargo and you have I.M. Pei putting up your building, your sign isn’t important. If you’re a $5-million company, the sign is the No. 1 thing that people know about your business. Does that sign resonate with me? Does it look like that business cares? Think about how you make choices about where you’ll shop, and the sign is a big part of that.
The sign on our headquarters is low-key. That is by design. We repositioned this company about two years ago, and spent time asking what do we do well?
Our primary strength was listening to our customers, and helping them elevate their customers’ experience through design translation. We wanted to be thought of as a design resource.
So many sign companies, the front is deliberately designed to look sign-y. You know, their sign will say, ‘Here’s the SIGN of a good business.’ We’re about design translation.
It’s worked real well. The whole industry went into a huge tailspin in 2002, just as we were coming out of our repositioning. Our customers were receptive to ‘elevate the experience,’ which became our tag line.
This year we’ll do about $6.5 million in sales. There was significant growth prior to 2002. In 2002, we did $7.5 million, 2003 that fell markedly, in 2004 it came back, and we’ve had a strong first quarter in 2005.
I had a feeling that while our volume was good, I didn’t think we were close enough to our customers.
It’s interesting. About 20 years ago we hired a consultant to look at us as a family business. They interviewed my grandfather and my grandfather’s siblings. My grandfather had attention to detail that I appreciate.
The profile of my great-grandfather was remarkably similar to mine. My great-grandfather, Gust, he had a sense of humor, but people were sometimes terrified of him. He was a tough guy with a heart of gold.
He knew his role in business, and that was to take care of his customers. It was always about taking care of the customers. It’s really not about us.”
— Interview by Beth Ewen
[contact] Randy Nordquist, Nordquist Sign Co. Inc.: 612.823.7291; randyn@nordquistsign.com; www.nordqistsign.com
