Yes we can

1983, Eric, just out of college, took on Mac's Milk's window signs. They were hand painted, store by store, across Ontario. Slow, expensive, and never quite the same twice. He rented a Gerber Signmaker IVB, the third one in Canada, and cut them in vinyl instead. Four months later his brother Armond joined him and it was a company.

Armond sold, Eric made.

Then PJ's ordered signs, and there was no way to get their logo into the machine. The typeface wasn't one of the font cartridges, and scanning artwork wasn't something a sign shop could do yet. So Eric projected the logo onto the wall at size, traced it, and cut it out of vinyl with a knife.

It worked, and it won the account. But cutting logos by hand with a knife wasn't a business, it was one long night that could only be repeated so many times. The next client with a custom logo was going to ask for the same thing, and Eric wasn't going to be the shop that said no.

So he went looking for the answer. The first Gerber digitizer in Canada, back when it took a full day to process a single logo. Then the first Gerber scanner in the country. Then the first faxed proofs. Then wide format, before most shops here knew what it was.

They never bought a machine to do one job. They bought the best machine they could find, wherever in the world it was being built, and worked out how to bend it to the problem in front of them.

Eric is still president. That attitude is still present in Alexandra, Raymond, and Edmond, the ones bringing in the requests nobody has a process for yet. Same instinct, second generation.

The old rule was never say never.

It's shorter now. Yes we can.