For franchise development & multi-site operators

You are opening 10 locations. Nobody owns the signs.

Your Sign Resource is the Sign Program Office: one brand book, one standard package, one calendar for partner fabrication and local install — so opening day does not wait on a crate.

Send the opening list See the $8–10k/mo program

What development already feels

The drawings look finished. The store still opens dark.

You do not have a “signage need.” You have a date, a landlord, and three incomplete shop bids.

Shop roulette

Each city gets a new vendor. One ghosts. One prices letters and forgets the raceway. One is cheap until the city asks for PE.

GC as sign vendor

The general contractor marks up a number they did not build. Embedment, landlord criteria, and light-up get lost in a schedule of values.

Pretty package, no path

A brand board with no site pack, no installer scope, and no one who will put a shovel in the dirt on that address.

Reframe

The issue is not effort. Nobody owns the path.

Shops fabricate. Cities stamp. Installers dig. Development approves. Without one owner from brand file to light-up, each handoff resets the date — and site 8 looks different from site 1.

Cost of staying unclear

Temporary banners that train customers to ignore the building. A monument in a crate while the store is open. Internal email that starts with “who owns signs?” You cannot hire a $60k PM later if the work is still tribal knowledge in your inbox.

The program

We run the year’s openings as one system.

1 — LOCK

Brand-book sprint

Two weeks. Standard wall, monument, colors, exclusions, installer scope language. Site 7 becomes a clone, not a custom job.

2 — QUEUE

Site pack on the calendar

Each opening gets a survey/design pack, split quote, vendor assignment, and a date that matches development — not the shop’s hope.

3 — LIGHT

Partner fab + local install

We sell in the installer with a two-trip scope a crew can bid. You approve finishes and cut the deposit. We stop calling it a project.

Included in the retainer: standards, queue, per-site pack, vendor coordination, weekly status. Not included: city permit clerking, city fees, crane, new power, fab invoices.

Price against the alternatives

You are buying one owner for the year. Not a stack of quotes.

	Per-site shop bids	GC markup	Sign Program Office
Who owns the date	Nobody	Shared	Named
Site 1 vs site 10	Starts over	Starts over	Same package
Your team’s hours	Every city	Every pay app	One weekly status
Cash shape	Lumpy surprises	Buried in SOV	$8–10k/mo floor
First thing you get	A rendering	An allowance	Brand book + opening list

First artifact

A book and a calendar. Not a deck.

After the sprint you can forward a standard package and this year’s site queue internally. That is the sentence development repeats to finance: “We hired a sign program office.”

Language you can paste

“We locked one sign package and one vendor path for the 10–12 openings this year. Design, shop, crate, and local install sit with one owner. City permits stay with the GC unless we add them later.”

Risk off the table

The only first check is the sprint.

2-week brand book before any monthly retainer
50% to release a site into production
Fab and freight on separate POs — no mashed invoice
Exclusions written before a shovel hits dirt
You can run 2–3 brands on the same system once the first book exists

Who this is for

VP / Director of Franchise Development, multi-unit operators, and brand ops people sitting on an 8–12 site calendar with no sign owner. Not a single storefront. Not a shop that needs a $45 code review.

Next step

Send this year’s opening list.

Brand, number of sites, first three cities, and the date the first store has to look finished. Twenty minutes. Then we tell you whether a sprint is worth it.