When we recieved the call from a car dealership outside of our normal service area we were curious. Why would a dealership more than an hour from us call us when there are at least a dozen sign companies between the dealership and us? Our production manager took the call and talked with them to find out how we could help. And that is where things got interesting. The dealership had been working with a company about 30 minutes from them for the past few years. This company did all of their design work and custom car wraps. But for some reason they stopped return their phone calls. Even when the dealership offered a substantial deposit due to the custom nature of this wrap, they still couldn’t get the company to call them back. When they looked to the internet, they found our website.
The scope of the project was simple, wrap the entire car from top to bottom using the trademarked logos of the Chicago Blackhawks. Because we were asked to use the Blackhawks logos, we needed to engage the legal staff of the Blackhawks. Every design element was checked against the color template of the team. The size and position of each logo had to fit the teams standard. Once we had the size, position and color to the teams liking, we waited for the legal staff to approve everything. We had to make a few small changes to meet the teams requirements and after resubmitting the changes, we had the teams approval.
When the car arrived at our shop, the interior had just been completed. They replaced the interior with custom leather seats that were embroidered with the teams logos. They also added the logo to the backseats and replaced the armrests with red stitched leather. It is a beautiful car. We started by dropping both bumpers, removing the outside mirrors, the spoiler, door handles and weatherstripping. A quick wipe down with rubbing alcohol and water to make sure that the surface was completely clean even of wax and we got to work. We noticed almost immediatley that the color that the team approved did not look right against the deep red currently on the car. The red on the car was so deep that it make the approved colors look pink in contrast. No chance we were going to use the printed material. We contacted the necessary people to let them know we had to use a different vinyl. We color matched the desired color to Avery-Dennison’s Carmine Red. We called all of our distributors only to find that no one had this color locally and the closest material was in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. So we jumped in the car and headed south to pick up the material. About three hours later, we returned to the shop with the material. During our travels, our production team continued to produce the accent pieces for the car. Once we had the material, we primed and edge sealed the entire vehicle to ensure that the vinyl won’t lift.
Start to finish this car took the better part of three days and looks incredible. If you have a company vehicle that you need branded, please give us a call at 262.289.9481 or email us at info@optimumsignswi.com.
