Do it right or don’t do it at all.
That was the guiding philosophy of Nelson Coffelt, longtime owner of Coffelt Signs. The motto still is at the center of the family business, even after Coffelt’s death in 2005.
Do it right. If a subcontractor didn’t do it right, make it right.
“We’ve apologized to some customers who didn’t understand why we were apologizing,” said Coffelt’s daughter Staci Hamman, who now runs the business with her husband, Rick. “We tell them, ‘You don’t understand. This is how Nelson Coffelt would have wanted us to do this.’”
Those exacting standards have been rewarded. Coffelt Signs has customers in five states and is the company of choice for the Braum’s chain. It’s put up signs for local businesses, leased billboards to others on the Kansas highways and even re-created the marquee for the Granada Theatre.
Its own sign on its South Commercial Street building remains one of the most recognizable in town: “Coffelt Signs Incorporated” with the word “Signs” outlined in running lights that periodically blink at passersby.
“A couple of people have stopped trying to buy it from us,” Rick Hamman said with a chuckle. “Why they want a sign that says ‘Coffelt Signs’ I have no idea.”
Seeing the signs
The company actually began with Coffelt’s cousin Laurence from Cottonwood Falls. Laurence Coffelt opened the Emporia company in 1949 at 113 S. Commercial St., just a block south of its present location. He was a painter and a sculptor whose work still can be seen at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
Laurence Coffelt saw his opportunity while hand-lettering signs on the sides of trucks, realizing there was an opening for somebody who could create an attractive sign.
Nelson Coffelt and his wife, Donna, arrived the next year from Cassoday and joined the business, which Nelson Coffelt would buy out in 1961.
The old shop had living quarters on the south side, a work area on the north and could just accommodate a pickup truck, Donna Coffelt said. Fitting some of today’s trucks? Forget it.
The company moved to its current home at 18 S. Commercial St. in 1962. With that move came more space and new equipment.
“I remember our first crane,” Coffelt said. “(Our son) Danny and Nelson went to Oklahoma City for it. You had to wind it up, it was hand-cranked. It wasn’t anything like it is now.”
Danny Coffelt also was an artist and eventually became creative director for Braum’s Ice Cream and Dairy Stores, one reason the two businesses have such strong ties. He died in 2002.
For a long time, Staci Hamman said, layout would be done in somebody’s head and drawings by hand before beginning to cut vinyl and put a sign together.
“Sometimes you’d end up closing the shop to get as much room as you could for a sign,” she said.
As a girl, she never expected to go into the family business. She was going to go into commercial art — at least, until she had a taste of it in her classes and realized she wasn’t all that interested. Then the goal shifted to teaching. She worked at the Dillons grocery for a while (where she met Rick Hamman) until one night when her dad asked “Why don’t you work for us?”
That was 20 years ago. She was soon hooked. And Rick followed on her recommendation.
“I have a year’s seniority on Rick,” she grinned.
“And she never lets me forget it,” he responded.
Name in lights
Even in a world where big corporate chains have their own preferred sign companies, Coffelt Signs still manages to get a pretty good piece of the action. Sometimes it’s by installing signs for the big boys, but there’s still plenty of opportunity for the Emporia company to get creative. The sign for Wizards Tapes and CDs, for example, required a lot of hand painting by Staci Hamman to get it right.
But the company’s proudest moment may have been when it was asked to do the marquee for Emporia’s Granada Theatre as the 1929-built movie palace was being restored.
“Nelson was one of the only people they could find who remembered the original colors,” Staci Hamman said.
The company studied photographs, consulted engineers and steadily began to recreate the older glory.
“It even got down to counting all the light bulbs,” Rick Hamman said.
The look would be accurate, although the construction style was a little more up to date. In the past, Hamman said, there would have been a lot of stainless steel and heavy glass instead of the lighter, more user-friendly acrylics and plastics used in many places.
Today, the flashing marquee is once again a standby of downtown. Its completion drew a lot of attention, even from out-of-state.
“We got quite a few calls because we did this one,” Staci Hamman said. “But once they find out what the cost was to restore it, they back off in a hurry.”
Signs of the times
Coffelt Signs employs seven people these days, about half what it used to. In the old days, the company sent its own crew to every work site, something that’s no longer the case.
“Anymore, we use subcontracting crews in different states, rather than having people all the time to do work at any given time,” Rick Hamman said.
Still, there’s been enough work that the Hammans are thinking of adding two more people. And they still make sure they check on the work those sub-crews have been doing, even though the farthest job may be 500 miles away.
Besides Kansas, the company takes jobs in Oklahoma and parts of Missouri, Arkansas and Texas.
The company’s crane rarely sits idle. If it’s not raising a sign into place, it’s usually being hired out to lift roof trusses, or hot tubs or even a swimming pool.
“That’s a release for me,” Hamman said. “And it helps to pay the taxes and the insurance expenses on the trucks. It’s a sideline, but it’s a fun one. I think it’s therapeutic.”
In the end, though, it’s still about the signs. And it’s still about what Nelson Coffelt always said: doing it right or not at all.
“You’ve got a certain obligation because it is your family’s business,” Staci Hamman said. “It’s your name on the front of the building.”
lynnie_p (anonymous) says...
Nellie would be so proud of this article.... and his family xoxo
August 13, 2007 at 2:35 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )