Keen Signs celebrated its 10-year anniversary in the summer of 2020, and the Keen family recently expanded the business into a larger location at 1467 Broad St.
For a company that crested 10 years of business in the midst of a global pandemic, Lane Keen, the company’s president, said commitment to treating both customers and suppliers with honesty and respect was a key ingredient in maintaining growth.
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“We really are a customer service company, and the way we take care of our customers is fulfilling their custom signage needs. Vehicle wraps; yard signs; exterior and interior of buildings; anything,” said Dana Keen, Lane’s daughter, who also works at the company.
Lane Keen said that people want to buy from “folks they know.” Doing business face-to-face is paramount for them. Obviously, face-to-face interaction was a bit harder to coordinate throughout the past year, but Lane said that their business didn’t change all that much as a result.
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“The people that needed us, they were still going to work. We had many customer relationships in place already, which made talking over the phone and doing business that way not much harder,” he said.
When 80% of the customer base is repeat clients simply coming back with additional needs, that makes maintaining consistent business simpler.
However, their business made one significant change during the height of the pandemic. They started making sneeze guards for use across the state.
“We had to innovate to stay busy while the world figured things out, so we started selling sneeze-guards made out of sign material,” Dana Keen said. “We started with government offices. Word of mouth picked up, and we started shipping them all over Georgia and even some other states.”
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The supply chain issues that have plagued businesses both small and large have affected Keen Signs, too. The Keens said their efforts toward becoming self-reliant helped them stay ahead.
“We’ve dealt with supply chain issues and are still dealing with them,” Lane Keen said. “What helped us was that prior to the pandemic, we had been buying equipment where we could do more for ourselves and rely less on buying wholesale. We still dealt with difficulties acquiring raw materials, but we never ran out due to our relationships with our vendors.”
In terms of looking ahead, Lane Keen said the one thing he foresees for the future is change.
“I don’t know what the next change is, but I do expect more labor and supply issues,” he said. “We’ve navigated both of those pretty well, and we’re still growing. We’ve made hires during the pandemic.”
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That growth brought about the recent expansion. The Keens likened their former office space to a maze, with deliveries and offices and products all stacked up on each other. They needed some breathing room but wanted to stay downtown, where many of their biggest clients are located, like Augusta University, the Family Y and Augusta’s many hospitals.
“We have to maintain that entrepreneurial spirit so you can be on your feet and ready for change,” Dana Keen said. “Our challenge is always being ready for what’s next.”
Tyler Strong is the Business Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at tyler@theaugustapress.com.
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