Robert Bogdan and his wife Kathleen have a long history with Heritage Sign Builders, originally known as Rustic Designs. Photos courtesy Heritage Sign Builders
By Peter Saunders
For more than 20 years, Heritage Sign Builders in Welland, Ont., has specialized in wooden and high-density urethane (HDU) signs and point-of-purchase (POP) displays. President Robert Bogdan describes himself as mostly self-taught in this discipline, though he got his start with his father, painting election signs in his youth.
“My dad was pretty artistic and I had a natural ability to work with wood,” he says. “I got started on my own in the sign industry in 1979, after I reached out to designers in Toronto and got contracted to carve my first dimensional sign for a restaurant.”
As more work followed, Bogdan launched his business as Rustic Designs, subcontracting other signmakers as needed for larger jobs. He switched from wood to the HDU medium in 1990, when demand grew for longer runs. This allowed a small shop to fill bigger orders.
“I had been asked by Lakeport Brewing if I could make 2,000 signs for them,” says Bogdan. “I investigated the process and, although they didn’t place the order, I created a sample that showed how we could achieve this kind of work. In the end, my first polyurethane (PU) job involved 100 signs for Upper Canada Brewing.”
Brewing up business
Today, Heritage operates with a staff of three or four, retaining its small, hands-on scale in about 279 m2 (3,000 sf) of an old industrial building.
“We’ve moved around a bit, but we’re still pretty small, with only a few full-time employees and part-time painters,” says Bogdan, who lives about 15 minutes from work. “I have a guy silkscreening for me now, which is important when we need to produce nearly 700 POP signs for Jack Daniel’s, for example.”
Indeed, much of Heritage’s work has been for distilleries, breweries and wineries, which generally tend to emphasize their own long histories through nostalgic sign styles. Clients have included Creemore Springs, Grolsch, Captain Morgan, Big Rock, Sleeman, Clancy’s, Great Western, Moosehead, Kronenbourg, Keith’s, Tetley’s, Kokanee, John Smith’s, Alpine, Conners, Molson, Caffrey’s, Labatt, Yellow Tail, Russell, Gibson’s, Shaftebury, Okanagan Spring, Younger’s, Kilkenny and Guinness, among others.
“It’s been mostly drinkmakers,’ says Bogdan. “We welcome new projects from the brewing industry worldwide.”
Heritage also produces dimensional logos and signs for retailers, which helps give them a distinctive image in a field of mostly flat signage. One of the company’s newer clients is the telecommunications provider Mobilicity, which installs cast letters inside its stores.
Another major client is Focus Fulfilment, which orders a variety of dimensional logos to add to the signboards it produces for Dietz & Watson delicatessens in the U.S. In Canada, Heritage’s other retail and food-service clients have included Druxy’s, Wolverine, Spudniks and Tilley Endurables.
