After a century of business in Chattanooga, Ortwein Sign is shining up its vision to reach nearby cities and light up sales.
Jim Teal, the company’s vice president of operations, said it already has moved into the Nashville area and is looking at Huntsville, Alabama, Knoxville and other metros in the region.
“I’d like to see us expand even more,” he said in an interview at the company’s East 50th Street headquarters near the Georgia state line. “That’s one mode of growing the business.”
Ortwein Sign traces its roots to 1923 when M.H. Ortwein started the company, said former owner Butch Ortwein about his grandfather.
At that time, the work involved creating and installing hand-painted signs, Butch Ortwein said in an interview, adding that he spent 50 years in the business before selling the company to Teal’s wife, Colleen, in 2007.
The computer era forever changed the sign business, Ortwein said, enabling a more automated way of production.
“As technology has advanced, the sign company has followed,” he said, noting there’s still a lot of hands-on work and artistic creativity.
Teal said the company builds LED, neon tube and channel letter signs for companies such as grocer Food City and many others. He said while Ortwein officials are eyeing work in other cities, plans are to keep manufacturing in Chattanooga.
He said Ortwein has sales people who meet with clients at their sites, find out their needs and then put the company’s design staff to work. Teal said the venture builds its signs in its 40,000-square-foot facilities.
‘We’re improving our manufacturing capacities,” he said. “We’ve got automation we’ve invested in. It’s improvement in what we already know how to do.”
Teal said it’s unusual for a business to last 100 years, and he cited the people who worked at the business before him, his wife and the company’s 45 current employees.
Teal said when the company was purchased in 2007, sales were about $1.5 million annually. In 2022, he said, the company put up sales of $5 million, which was the company’s best year. Teal said Ortwein Sign is on track to hit the $6 million mark this year.
An engineer by training, Teal grew up in Nashville and moved back to Tennessee from Pennsylvania with his wife when Ortwein was acquired 16 years ago.
While that main office is off East 50th Street, the company bought a second building several years later to accommodate the growing business, Teal said. That building is where its large signs are fabricated, he said.
A relatively new line of business for the company is indoor signs, Teal said.
“That’s growing pretty quickly,” he said.
Teal said while business fell off during the pandemic, dropping 10% to 15%, it has returned strong.
But like other businesses coming out of the pandemic, finding and retaining quality employees is the biggest challenge, he said.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.