After doubling sales from 2022 to 2023, Easy Signs has experienced a further 50 per cent increase in sales as it grows to over 50 staff members from its operations in Pennsylvania.
Easy Signs first opened its US operations with a $US2.8 million investment to open a 6700 square metre facility in March 2022.
Easy Signs was recently featured on the front page of the New York Times commenting on the tariffs up to 400 per cent placed on aluminium components from China.
In an exclusive interview with Sprinter, Easy Signs co-owner Andy Fryer, said the tariffs have impacted the next growth phase for the US including plans to open a second factory.
“The expansion into the US has continued to bring new challenges. Despite these we are continuing to see strong growth and last month we hit a new milestone reaching 50 employees. We are now shipping products all around the US and have been working towards expanding our manufacturing to a facility on the west coast,” he said.
“This has unfortunately been put on pause while the tariff issues are resolved. The journey so far has not been without its challenges and the learning curve has been steeper than anticipated. Luckily the hard work put in by our Australian COO Steph Wilbow who has been living in the US since we established, along with her team and the supporting team back in Australia, we have managed to overcome anything thrown at us so far and continue to grow quickly.”
In terms of growth, Fryer confirmed that in June 2023, sales were double those of 2022 and in June 2024, these numbers grew again by a further 50 per cent.
“We are currently experiencing some challenges as certain product lines are going out of stock due to having to turn around containers. We are hoping to have this all resolved in the next two to three months so we can keep pushing forward. We currently run two shifts – day and afternoon – in the US, and were recently about to add a night shift but that was placed on pause as we weren’t sure how impacted sales would be due to stock outages and the uncertainty of the tariffs,” Fryer said.
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