The best thing that could ever happen to a "For Sale" signage is being taken out. :)

A typical day in Clearwater, a typical day in construction

It was a typical day in Clearwater, Florida, when Ron woke up. The bright sun had already risen and was starting to cut through the slight chill of the night. With plants starting to perk up from the dose of sunlight, it was perhaps a little bit overly humid than ideal at this time of day. Still great, nevertheless. After a hearty breakfast, Ron was pumped to get going. Grabbed his partner in crime, a fresh home-brewed coffee steaming in his travel mug, off he went to inspect one of our construction sites. Being the neighborhood builder, the first stop was only 5 minutes away. But something was going to be off today…

So a little bit about construction, something is always off. Our normal is being filled with safety hazards to avoid, “disputes” with contractors on how to do the right thing, scheduling and delivery miscommunications, haggling with vendors to get the best deal, or negotiating with mother nature to send the weather a little further away to sea. There is always chaos, and chaos is part of the job. It’s what we do and why people don’t do it themselves.

If we deal with so many issues, what was off today? So Ron drove to our project on Union Street, and lo and behold, our for sale sign that we had placed on the property was damaged. Smashed right in two and ruined beyond repair. The little guy only had maybe 5 months under his belt—what a way to start a day.

Designing the For Sale Sign

Designing the sign was not as simple as just typing some words in a word processor and sending it off to someone to make. We knew the contents of what the sign would say. It had to say “For Sale,” it had to have our company website/phone number, our logo, what we did, and our contractor license. But a sign goes a little beyond those words. It’s almost like the first impression you get when you meet someone. We had to think about all the components that joined together and make a melody that represented us. We didn’t realize that at first, but sign creation was part of our growing process and evolution to be a different kind of construction company. When Ron and I first got together, I had sent him a sign like every other. It was red. All sales signs are red. The realtor’s signs are red somewhere. What they teach you in marketing is to grab attention, you need red. Red this, red that, red red. And that’s what I did.

But the first edition was a quick "no" from Ron. It was bland, it was boring, and it was what everyone else did. We need to figure out what company colors were and how to integrate the elevation concept. I cycled through different backgrounds and font colors. In addition, there were physical attributes like the actual size and post styles. It turns out the default size for "For Sale" signs is a 24"x36" swing post for realtors. But we're not a realtor. We're a construction company. We're Parasol!

Ultimately, we opted for 4.5 feet high x 4 feet wide post and panel sign, white PVC posts with nice post caps. We added curved corners influenced by the theme of our website. On the top half, we used a purple-blue to turquoise gradient to showcase our fresh nature, modern appearance, with white lettering to highlight our phone number, then our website. On the bottom half, we stuck to our company’s traditional grey color scheme and logo and company focus “High-End Custom Homes and Renovations.”

Eulogy

From start to finish, the sign was designed in April 2019, produced by a local sign company in Lutz in July 2019, installed onsite Clearwater in September 2019, and found deceased in December 2019.

All in all, the sign was $450 to produce, plus hours of designing, debating, and installation by our team. While this sign was a loss, we still managed to sell the property before this misadventure, and reproduction can be done easier now with the source files safely tucked away on the cloud, so its sacrifice was not made in vain. Who did this terrible deed? It is unknown and not worth the public’s funds to investigate. Upon signing the purchase agreement, I secretly imagine the new homeowners couldn’t contain their excitement and performed a celebratory smash to prevent any other buyers from jumping in. In conclusion, our company has learned and gained from experience together, and like any off day, we must make light of the situation and look at things on the bright side.

This article was last updated on Dec 18, 2024