“My plan was not for the space to be open to the public, since I would continue to focus on selling online,” El Kassem says, describing the shop as a small, garage-like box on a residential road near a main street, “but as it turned out, after I was ‘inaccessible’ for the first couple of weeks, I started to get walk-in customers! And a lot of people wanted to come in to ask questions before ordering. At the same time, shipping artwork in heavy tubes kept getting more expensive. So, as my local presence took off, I eliminated my online business activities.”
The nature of his printed output also changed. Customers began to request signs, banners and vehicle decals. With his focus on wall murals, he said no at first, but soon relented and expanded his shop’s offerings to match demand.
“It changed pretty quickly,” he says.
A full-time pursuit
After the first year running the shop, El Kassem quit waiting tables. His last shift was on New Year’s Eve at the end of 2010.
“I didn’t want to be a waiter anymore,” he says. “I wanted to focus aggressively on this business full-time. After I quit, I worked at the shop by myself until March 2011, then took on a graphic design student through a local college co-op program. I ended up hiring her after the co-op term ended and she stayed here for a year. After she left, I hired another graphic designer, although like me, he does a bit of everything—design, print, cut, weed and install.”
For a relatively unassuming, two-person business, the name ‘Loudmouth Printhouse’ may seem like a misnomer, but it represents the spirit of much of its work today.
“Before the shop opened, I was going to name it Tweak Printhouse, since I focus a lot on tweaking my customers’ image files to improve the final results,” he says, “but it changed when I started to get more interest from businesses. I like the idea of ‘Loudmouth’ representing marketing with bright, colourful signs or other media.”
Loudmouth has produced such signs for restaurants, hair salons, yoga studios and other small, public-facing businesses. This niche market has been a good fit for the shop’s capabilities.
“All of us small-business owners know each other,” says El Kassem. “I’ve had real-estate agents ask me about signs, but I can’t handle the volumes they’re looking for. There’s also a lot of government-commissioned work available here in Ottawa, but there’s too much red tape to go through. They want job quotes submitted on proper letterhead. That’s not how I work.”
Besides the walk-in customers and small-business referrals, Loudmouth’s services are marketed through Twitter and Facebook postings that showcase its work, along with a handful of print ads. Together, it has been sufficient to bring in a steady stream of work.
In a given week, Loudmouth will handle between 35 and 40 jobs, including roughly 10 sandwich boards or other signs, 10 large-format backlit graphics and 20 custom die-cut decals. Wall murals are commissioned about once a month.
“Anytime we hear someone we know is having a baby, I figure we have six months to come up with something cool for their room!” says El Kassem. “I like the amount of work we get. The business could maybe become a little bigger, but I can’t fit more staff here.”
In addition to the pair of cutters, the shop is equipped with two heat presses for T-shirt graphics, a Xerox digital press for business cards, postcards and smaller signs and a screen press for the occasional screenprinted posters.
“When we do screenprinting, it’s usually two- or three-colour work on artist’s paper to promote a local band’s concert,” says El Kassem. “We’re not going to screenprint 500 signs for an election, but there’s a niche market for screened images because they’re cool. And people who really like it are willing to pay for it. A four-colour manual press is not going to be cheaper to use than a digital printer!”
Loudmouth installs its own graphics indoors and occasionally outdoors, but avoids heavy-duty sign installation work.
“When I first opened in this space, there was a furniture store in Quebec that wanted a 6 x 13.7-m (20 x 45-ft) backlit sign, which would be 7.6 m (25 ft) above the ground,” says El Kassem. “I stressed over it for days while I cut panel after panel. I contacted a boom truck rental company, but in the end went with another print shop that could install the piece. It took them a day and a half. That’s when I realized I didn’t want to go too large and overextend myself. I’ve made banners that jet out from buildings, but I always get someone else to install them.”
