President’s Post – February 2025

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope you all had an opportunity to have some time away from the office and spend some quality time with family and close friends.

As I write this, we are well and truly through January, time just seems to go so much faster when we have a month with so many short weeks, however, watching the Sail GP on the Wellington long weekend was a great way to spend a long weekend. I also find January a tough month also due to the number of late nights staying up watching the Australian Open tennis. This has just concluded, and there does seem to be a bit of a hole to fill in the evenings, but that will soon pass, I’m sure.

This summer has been a funny one, most of the East coast and Wellington had a summer that felt more like winter, there were disruptions to the ferries, and now that we are all back to work, the weather seems to be clearing, and summer is arriving.

All indications are that this looks like it will still be a fairly challenging year, in particular the first 6 months of it. I have a list of key bullet points to work through that I want to achieve this year, we have had quite a disruptive couple of years, and I know I am looking forward to coming out the other side. One key decision I have recently made, a little bit off the cuff in reality, is to attend the ISA Sign show in Las Vegas on 22-25 April. There are some great seminars that particularly made me take note, one is on the impact that AI will have on sign shops. Out of personal interest, there is another seminar on 3D printing and how best to use this technology in a sign shop. These sessions, on top of all the other things that will be displayed at the sign show.

It is clear that new technologies are going to change how a lot of companies are going to do business in the future, and it is going to be very interesting to see what trends and impacts these are starting to have in the larger markets overseas. I can also confirm that Las Vegas has other interesting things to attend outside of the sign show. We have already booked a stage show and planned a trip to the Signage graveyard just out of Las Vegas. This is now home to the famous signs from the 50’s and 60’s that have been placed in the middle of the desert, where the very dry atmosphere keeps them in pretty good condition with the huge help of the association that is tasked with looking after them. It is just so interesting walking around these large signs that are so iconic.

If any of our members are also heading to the ISA Sign show in Las Vegas, please do reach out and let us know. It would be greatfor us all to get together while we are over there and compare notes! Either get in touch with me directly, or let Mikayla or Melissa know and they can pass on your details. 

We are rolling out our first regional NZSDA association meeting in February for the Wellington area, this is on the 27^th February at my sign shop on Hutt Rd, Pipitea. I am looking forward to meeting as many people as possible that night. We will be giving an update on things we are rolling out from the NZSDA, discuss the new format Master Sign Maker, and I am looking at going through the process of how the format works for the judging of the Sign Awards. It is a much harder job than what it looks like, and with our next conference and Awards night happening in Nelson this June, coinciding with our 60^th Birthday, I am sure there are going to be a lot of entries, and a huge amount of interest for this amazing industry event.

We are just fine tuning the key dates for the other regional meetings around the country. I will bring these up in these Presidents Posts, and there will be a lot of other communications from our team, so please keep an eye on these, and it would be great to have both larger turnouts and more active engagement from our meetings that we had last year.