Sign Shop Profile: GTA Car Wrap

by all | 9 July 2015 9:48 am

By Peter Saunders
Hadi Nouri, founder and CEO of GTA Car Wrap, did not enter the sign industry through a traditional route. After earning a bachelor degree in software engineering in Iran, he moved to Canada in 2006. He studied English as a Second Language (ESL) at Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology in Toronto, followed by Seneca’s Digital Media Arts (DMA) course at York University, which focused on working with interactive multimedia applications for the web, mobile devices, social media and other new development platforms. Nouri honed his graphic skills on website design, but realized it was a highly competitive field and began to look for other business opportunities with equal or greater growth potential.

“I always wanted to run my own business, rather than work for someone else,” he explains. “One of my professors at Seneca, Andrew Tedford, was very cool and understood the graphics business. As he put it, website design is a good field, but you have to be so powerful to really stand out in the market. Then a family friend inspired me to turn my graphic design background to vehicle wraps, by pointing out how they were related.”

Having no inkling about the car wrap business, Nouri researched the market. He watched how-to videos online, took hands-on courses with 3M Canada, practised wrapping his own car and made new contacts in the industry. The more he learned, the more he realized there was still a largely untapped opportunity to sell wraps to small businesses.

“At the time, it seemed like the big car wrapping companies already had their own big customers and were not looking to add more,” he says. “I decided to target small businesspeople who, like me, didn’t know anything about car wraps before. I had to learn to sell them something they’d never bought before. And at first I didn’t even know how to price it!”

Building the business
Following this steep learning curve, Nouri launched GTA Car Wrap in 2009 as a division of Toronto Media Pro, his website design and development business. He opened a 260-m² (2,800-sf) shop in Vaughan, Ont., where his first wrap customer was a referral.

“It wasn’t busy at first because, as mentioned, I was approaching people who didn’t know yet what car wraps were,” he says. “That was so hard. I had to explain the medium to them, how it’s like free advertising compared to buying a billboard.”

In particular, Nouri approached businesses that were using plain white vans, as these provided the most obvious opportunities for wrap-based advertising. From construction contractors to restaurants with delivery vehicles to mobile businesses where the van is the owner’s office, he found all of these businesses came with their own ideas for wraps.

For the first year, he ran the entire business himself, outsourcing the printing to nearby shops.

“Business was so slow that year,” he says. “I was wrapping a maximum of two cars a month.”

In 2010, Nouri purchased his first printer—an HP Designjet—to bring the work in-house. In 2014, when he moved the business to its current, slightly larger 279-m² (3,000-sf) facility in Richmond Hill, Ont., he replaced the Designjet with an HP durable aqueous ‘latex’ inkjet printer.

“I like the quality of latex inks,” he says, “and they dry right away, so we can laminate the graphics right after printing them.”

Over the same period, he replaced his original, basic laminator with a new Royal Sovereign model and added the latest Graphtec laser cutter for plotting.

Finding new customers
One of the keys to landing new clients was to turn Nouri’s online expertise to advertising, by using the likes of Google and Kijiji to get the word out.

“New customers can be anywhere, but in the future, businesses will reach most of them online,” he says. “That’s why we spend a lot on online advertising.”

Another strategy was to branch quickly into ‘paint replacement’ wraps with tuning films, which target auto enthusiasts and other consumers, rather than businesses. While this is still a side business to GTA’s primary focus on advertising graphics, it too has seen demand grow.

“Now the car enthusiasts are looking for us,” Nouri says. “We’re always first in their online search results. The business has been getting more and more popular. I plan to exhibit at high-end automotive shows.”

Both the first and second GTA locations have been near highways, which has helped draw customers based everywhere from downtown Toronto to Brampton and Burlington, Ont.

“We have very flexible hours,” says Nouri. “Some customers drop off their vehicles at 11 p.m. And because many businesses need their cars on weekdays, we’re open full-time on weekends just to wrap those vehicles. They really like that about us. As a small business professional myself, I really understand their needs.”

Indeed, GTA’s business model relies on catering differently to its split customer base of businesses and consumers. While the commercial clients usually need their vehicles wrapped right away, luxury car owners are in no hurry, as they prioritize quality over speed.

“We’ve had customers come in who’ve had a bad-quality wrap in the past,” says Nouri. “They pay us to remove it. It’s important to realize in this business that if people don’t like the quality you provide, they will never come back to you.”

A specialized model
Another key to success has been to keep GTA’s focus narrow.

“If you need surgery, you don’t go to your family doctor,” says Nouri. “Similarly, we’re not a print shop. We’re specialists who only do car wraps. We provide a warranty and have never had any issues with our work.”

So, while GTA now prints its own graphics, it does not compete with printing companies; in fact, they are among its customers, as many would prefer to leave car wraps to specialists.

“I exhibited at the Graphics Canada show for my first time in April and it was really good to be there,” Nouri says. “Many print shops want to sell car wraps to their customers, so we sell wholesale to them. We got a lot of projects from that show.”

The narrow focus has also helped optimize use of the shop’s limited space. From wrapping a maximum of two cars per month in its first year, GTA now wraps approximately 20 to 25 per month, for a total of more than 250 per year.

“We can easily work on three at the same time,” says Nouri.

The GTA team includes two graphic designers, a production manager and two full-time certified installers. Nouri mostly focuses on sales and marketing, as he has built direct relationships with his customers, but he is also assisted by two public relations (PR) and sales representatives.

“In the next couple of years, I’ll look to expand into a bigger facility,” he says.

In the meantime, however, expansion is already beginning at a cross-Canada and international scope.

“I’ll be opening GTA branches in Vancouver, Montreal and the U.K. in the coming year,” says Nouri. “I’ve researched these markets and I’m working with contacts I know, such as my cousin in the U.K., who’s also a graphic designer and a fan of cars. In the past, there’s been a disconnect between suppliers and customers, which has left this opportunity open. Within the next few years, I’m sure everyone will know about car wraps.”

Nouri will own each of these branches, which will operate based on the technical, sales and marketing expertise he has developed over the past six years.

“I’ve learned a lot and it feels good,” he says. “I went from knowing nothing to becoming an expert.”

Source URL: https://www.signmedia.ca/sign-shop-profile-gta-car-wrap/

---