Cover Update: Timid Customers

Cover Update: Timid Customers

Even companies specializing in wrapping cars and boats in advertisements are having trouble avoiding the wrath of the all-encompassing slumping housing market.

Take SignZoo, a Sarasota-based sign wrap business that's essentially a mobile marketing outfit. A large core of its customers are businesses in the home services industry, such as plumbers, carpenters and contractors. Another business line, and one that had been growing rapidly, is in luxury boats.

But in the latter half of 2007, SignZoo collided with the struggling Gulf Coast housing market. Revenues, which had grown by an annual rate of about 50% since the company was founded in 2000, to $4 million in 2006, were flat in 2007. Says co-founder Larry Cavalluzzi: "I've seen some timidness on the parts of some clients who would normally have pulled the trigger."

Still, 2007 wasn't a total lost cause for the company. One major highlight was a long awaited move into a new facility a few hundred feet from its old one, a short but significant move. SignZoo had been operating out of a 3,600-square-foot storefront in a small strip plaza on U.S. 301 near downtown Sarasota since 2000; things got so cramped Cavalluzzi had a drop ceiling ripped out to make way for executive offices.

What's more, the company's new 10,000-square-foot facility isn't just spacious. It is more visible from the road, Cavalluzzi says, and once inside, clients and potential customers are impressed with the changes. "It gives clients a better level of comfort," he says. "It has increased interest in the business."

An ongoing challenge for Cavalluzzi and co-founder Todd Stuart has been marketing the company's services and products, no matter the state of the housing market. Going back to its early years, the company has approached the challenge by going national - a 20-truck plumbing company in Bradenton could use a new fleet wrap just as much as a 20-truck plumbing company in Brooklyn, they figured.

That task has now gone high-tech. The company invested considerably in 2007 on Internet consultants and research, or what's sometimes referred to as search-engine optimization. The investment includes buying pay-per-click services from Google, which allows SignZoo to track all the hits to its Web site, www.signzoo.com, and differentiate between browsers and interested customers.

One lesson the company learned in Internet marketing was specificity. For example, there's a big difference in search results between the words fleet wrap and vehicle wrap, Cavalluzzi says.

"There's a lot of companies that do vehicle wraps," says Cavalluzzi, "but we market ours as a fleet wrap company."

-Mark Gordon