The Wider View: Why Installation is Key For Building Your Business

Increasingly, wide-format customers are looking for providers with a wider range of services. As opposed to being a cog in the wheel, meaning you provide the printing and the customer figures out the rest, PSPs are becoming fuller service. For a lot of producers seeking to grow in the wide-format space, one increasingly-expected service is installation.

Dan Marx, content director of Wide-format Impressions, holds extensive knowledge of the graphic communications industry, resulting from more than three decades working across segments with business owners, equipment and materials developers, and thought leaders.

To an outsider, graphic installers are often generalized into a single, monolithic definition — that they are people who install pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) materials to surfaces — which is only partially true. I’ll explain.

Sticky Side Down

Operating under the umbrella of PRINTING United Alliance is PDAA, more formally known as the Professional Decal Application Alliance. PDAA has been in operation for 50 years, providing training and certification for people who do vehicle wraps, adhesive wall graphics, window graphics, fleet graphics, and other applications. They are, in my opinion, some of the best of the best in the installation space because their proficiency has been verified, and their knowledge holds across a wide variety of PSA manufacturers. In a recent development, Installation United, will serve as training and certification, and will work to expand the scope of installation activities represented.

While it is not uncommon for installers to have a specialty — for instance those who do only vehicle wrapping — others have followed the changes in the graphics segment, grasping opportunities in other areas including sign installation, wallpaper installation, surface refinishing, even light electrical installation. Like wide-format PSPs, these installers (or installation companies) have expanded their services to meet needs where needs exist, as they should.

Reason to Celebrate

The expansion of skills and capabilities common in the graphic installation space is great news for both PSPs and their customers. While some PSPs have installers on the payroll, others rely on installation networks — of which PDAA is one — to help them finish some of their work. I can also help them expand their reach. For instance, graphics produced in Kansas City, MO, can now be installed in Pocatello, ID, or Pierre, SD. Think about it: Through an installation network of trained, certified professionals, PSPs can have — to some degree — regional or national reach. It gives them a larger field on which they can play.
So, if you run a wide-format business and are seeking ways to grow your business, even into the next city over; to add product offering beyond low-margin products (I’m looking at you, vinyl banners!); or enabling a fledgling department withing a broader printing operation a stronger opportunity, then installation should be a service to consider.

When and Why

For some, installation is not simply an all-or-nothing service. While a company may have an installer on staff who does a perfect job of installing murals in retail settings or simple vehicle branding, what about jobs that require working, say, 15-stories up on the side of a building, or wrapping a Ferrari — the jobs where you need to call in the “big guns?”

Even though your company can’t “do it all,” strategic partnerships with professional installers may enable it to do much more. For example, your company gains the keys to bidding on a wider variety of jobs. You worry about the printing and production, they take care of putting your good work in place.

For more information on PDAA and Installation United, visit PRINTING United Alliance at
printing.org