I thought I would share a little history about myself and how our company came to be. Our company is family owned and operated. You can purchase as little as one item or contact us for bulk wholesale prices. We sell and ship worldwide. In 1975 American was gearing up for the Bi-centennial and I was sixteen and a sophomore in high school . I was artistic and always wanted to be a cartoonist and was
going in that direction. I had a weekly comic strip in the local newspaper. It didn't run too many weeks because I got to busy with sign making and girl dating! I just recently started working on my comic strip again. Reviving the old strips and working on new ones. You can see them at www.wimpycomics.com . My older brother was artistic too and was always hand painting names on race / street cars. A local wrecker service ask him to letter their three wreckers in custom red, white and blue lettering. He ask me to draw the lettering and make a pattern for him so I did. He lettered one wrecker and decided he had done enough. Well, the owner ask me if I would do them and I told him I didn't have any experience painting letters. His reply was "If you can draw it you can paint it". So, I did the other 2 wreckers. It didn't take long for word to spread around town that there was now a local sign guy! Everyone started calling me for sign jobs. "Shockey Signs" had now been started! We hand lettered cars, trucks, billboards, windows, etc. Let's just say we would paint on most anything! It would take a whole day back then to to a job that we can do in less than an hour today. Then in 1982 someone figured out a way to make things easier on us old sign painters by developing computerized sign making equipment. I was working for another sign company at that time about 30 miles away and still kept my company going too. They bought one of the new vinyl plotters. It was a Gerber Signmaker IVB! It was very limited as to what it could do. It had 1 font built in and very font you wanted to add cost $300 and was on a card that you plugged into the motherboard. It would hold up to 8 fonts at a time. They also had a card that had some simple graphics like a silhouette of a deer. They put me in charge of learning how to use it and so I moved up from working in the paint room to running this new machine in a nice air conditioned office! Well, of course when I was done cutting I had go back out to the paint room and apply them. (Can't have it good all the time I guess) I worked there for a couple of years then went full time in my own company. In 1984, God blessed us with a daughter, Gina, and with that our name changed to "Shockey & Daughter Sign Co.". That name sure got a lot of attention. Everyone would say "I have heard of 'somebody and son' but never 'somebody and daughter'!" As time passed, the business grew and so did demands. We outgrew our little office and built a new facility. Then in 1991 we were blessed again with another daughter, Heather. With this we again changed our name by adding an "s" to "Daughter", making it "Shockey & Daughters Sign Co.". We owned a large video store in town for several years (my wife managed it) and decided to sell it with the new baby here. When we did that gave me the funding to purchase my first computerized sign equipment. Yes, I purchased a good ol' Gerber Signmaker IVB! A couple of years later they made a add-on card that allowed you to connect it to a computer making cutting a whole new world! Anything you could design on the computer, you could now cut! Since then we have upgraded many times and now can cut & digitally print (1440 dpi) vinyl up to 60" wide! We have 2 plotter/printers in the office that we use. In 1993 we were blessed yet again, only with a son this time, TJ. So I went out to the company van and on the rear bumper I added "...and TJ too!" Well, when he got old enough to understand some things, he realized that he wasn't part of the sign company name. Sooo, we had the pleasure of toying with changing the name again. So... finally after kicking it around for a bit my wife Janie came up with one...... "signs2graphics". Hopefully, this will be the last name change. But change is good, and we want to continually change our service by improving it for you, our "valued" customer. We want to be your "1 Stop Sign Shop". We can only achieve this with your help. If we offend you... tell us... if we please you, tell someone else. Thank you for your patronage! God Bless,
Timothy Shockey
