Sign business overtakes farming
By LARRY MEYER
ARGUS OBSERVER
Saturday, November 7, 2009 10:17 PM PST
| |
| Lane (left), Lisa and Tate Turner, TNT Signs and Graphics, stand behind a printing machine in their store, 2042, S.W. Fourth Ave., Ontario. |
ONTARIO — TNT Signs and Graphics is a business started by Tate and Lisa Turner to help supplement their income when they were farming full-time, but what happened is that the sign business became so successful it became their full-time job, so they sold the farm and moved to something smaller.
The Turners started making signs working out of their home and did that for four years. “We’re going on our sixth year here,” Lisa Turner said, in their Ontario store, 2042 S.W. Fourth Ave.
“We do everything from magnetic signs to wraps,” she said. “We’ve done walls. We do a lot of banners.”
“We do all kinds of vehicle wraps,” Tate Turner said. Besides cars and trucks, they do boats, snowmobiles and did one of the Snake River Transit buses.
The list also includes race cars, and a lot of 4-H club and FFA banners. The Turners have helped defray the costs for the latter two. Turner did the “Welcome to Ontario” sign at Airport Corner. While they cannot do the hook-ups, Turners do install electric signs.
“I grew up in Drewsey,” Tate Turner said, and they moved to the Vale area where his parents had purchased a farm. It was a little slow the first months, but then it took off, and eventually they had to decide which they wanted to do.
They now own 40 acres west of Ontario, which keeps them in touch with farming, but the sign business keeps the whole family busy.
“Our son Lane does a lot of the smaller stuff,” Lisa Turner said.
They could have expanded, taking on more orders and adding employees but decided to keep it a small family business, Tate Turner said, and business has been good.
“We’ve been able to maintain,” he said.
While they have pretty much gotten out of farming, the Turners attribute a lot of their early success to their connections with the farming community, getting a lot of orders for signs on farm vehicles.
They also make a lot of signs for other small businesses, such as realty signs, and are excited when they are asked to do a sign or signs for businesses starting up, they said.
